


Feel the Tide

by positivelymeteoric



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, M/M, Teenlock, teen, teen!lock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/positivelymeteoric/pseuds/positivelymeteoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things John Watson doesn't expect to do when he transfers to a new school:<br/>A) Befriend his (possibly) mad roommate.<br/>B) Investigate a particularly nasty streak of murders with his (most likely) mad roommate.<br/>C) Fall slightly (or not so slightly) in love with his (definitely) mad roommate.<br/>D) All of the above.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The nightmares weren't so bad, really. As long as he made sure to muffle his sobs into a pillow and bite down on his fist to keep from screaming, the only attention he got was a raised eyebrow from his father in the morning at breakfast or a worried look from a teacher after he fell asleep in class yet again.

No, the worst part was when the nightmares happened during the day: when without warning his mind was filled with headlights glaring midday bright and charging the wrong way down the road or the sudden noise of crumpling metal and shattering glass.

When that happened, it was all he could do to stand frozen in place and try to keep from screaming or throwing up or passing out or all of the above. He'd grip onto the back of a chair or a doorframe and try to slow his shallow, frenzied breaths, try some of the bullshit exercises his therapist had taught him to deal with the attacks.

At night, after the worst of his sobs had subsided and he could open his eyes without fear of seeing blood and broken glass, he wondered if he had actually died that night.

Because John was fairly sure he was in hell.

 

"And how do you spell that again, dear?" It was the third time the woman at the administration desk had asked this. Her hair was an unnatural red, nearly the same color as her talon-like nails and John couldn't help but wonder if she had planned it that way.

"It's Watson. John and Harriet Watson. W-A-T-S-O-N."

"Right. You're kind of old to be a transfer student aren't you? What are you, seventeen?" Her nails made a steady _click click click_ against the keyboard as she entered their names into the computer.

"Sixteen," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Next to him, Harry made a small grumpy noise and dug her nails into his palm.

"Stop it, _Harriet_ ," he whispered, and she switched from digging her nails to scratching at his hand. He tried his best to surreptitiously kick her in the shins without the secretary noticing.

The spaces between the ticks of the clock in the stuffy little office seemed to grow longer and longer, and John had the sudden feeling that he was being led into a trap.

 _One year_ , he told himself. _Just one year._

 

"It'll be good for both of you," their father had said a few weeks ago. They were sitting in the kitchen in their old flat (which had once felt cheerfully cramped and cozy but now had altogether too much space), picking at takeaway containers of pad thai. None of them were particularly hungry and the noodles grew cold and limp as he spoke. "St. Bart's is a fantastic school, and that friend of yours from primary school goes there, Mike Stratford or Stamford or something like that. Remember him, Johnny? Still keep in touch?"

"Yeah, Dad. Of course." John hadn't spoken to Mike Stamford since the Watsons had moved to London when he was nine, but he didn't have the heart to tell his father that, not when it was so obvious that he thought that this was something that would make the two of them happy.

Harry, on the other, wasn't anywhere near as eager to placate their father.

"I won't have any _friends_ there. _You_ won't be there. I'll hate it and I'll be bored and the only things I'll have to keep me company are stinking fat cows and _John_."

John was about to open his mouth to protest his being categorized with cows (and stinking fat ones at that) when his father cut him off.

"It's near a lovely little town, and I promise you, dear, there are no cows to be seen. And it'll be good for the two of you to get London out of your lungs. Besides, Ella agrees that it's a good idea for John. She thinks it'll help."

John gave his father a weak smile.

 _Shut up_ , he thought desperately. _Please. I'll go to this school if you'll just shut up and stop reminding me that I've got a bloody therapist and that I can't get through the day without a bloody panic attack._

Harry flopped down dramatically face first onto the table, one braid landing amidst the noodles.

"Why should _I_ be punished just because John's a nutter?" she muttered into her sleeve.

"Harriet!" his father shouted, his voice too loud in the stifling silence of the flat. "Apologize to your brother this instant."

"Sorry, Johnny," Harry said, scraping her chair back from the table and standing up, not sounding particularly sorry. She picked up her pad thai and made it halfway to the refrigerator before throwing it onto the floor and storming out of the room. From the other end of the flat, they could hear her stomping down the hall and slamming her bedroom door shut.

"It's hard on her too, you know," his father said, leaving his seat to clean up Harry's mess. His eyes were apologetic as he looked at John, as if he could erase what had just happened. "Ten year olds aren't exactly known for their grief coping skills. She doesn't mean any of it."

"I know, Dad. It doesn't bother me. Honestly," John replied, standing up to help him pick noodles and bean sprouts off the floor.

"Just one year, Johnny. That's all I'm asking for. If you don't like it, if it doesn't help with- everything, then you can come back. And it's only a forty minute train ride away if you want to come back and visit or if you need to see Ella. I just- I just think it'll be good for you to get away from all these memories. For the both of you."

John mustered up his best imitation of a smile. He could see the toll this summer had taken on his father. He seemed to have aged ten years in three months and sometimes he'd disappear into his bedroom for hours. John could hear the quiet click of the lock and his soft sobs from his room, and they always made him feel deeply unsettled, as if he was witnessing something he was never supposed to see.

"One year," he said, trying his best to make his tone sound as positive as possible.

"That's my good lad." His father patted John's back, giving him a weak smile and John suddenly felt desperate to get out of the room.

"Listen, Dad, I'm absolutely knackered, so I'm heading to bed. I'll see you in the morning, yeah?"

"Right. Well, remember you've got an appointment with Ella at noon."

Right. Of course. How could he forget that he couldn't make it through the week without a visit to his therapist?

John left the room, heading into his bedroom and shutting the door carefully behind him. From the kitchen, he could hear his father putting the last of the dishes away, and then flicking off the kitchen light.

The bedroom door shut.

The lock clicked into place.

And try as he might, John could hear everything.

 

"Right. So d'you know where you're headed?" They'd left the administration building and were heading down a path shaded by trees, Harry's slightly sweaty hand wrapped around John's. Other families helping their children move in milled about, lugging trunks and suitcases, younger siblings in tow.

"Course I do. I'm not a baby, John." He'd have to beg to differ, seeing as her shoes were untied and her braids had collapsed into a rumpled mess after she had fallen asleep on the train ride from London.

"Of course you're not. But at least let me help you move your things in. You can't lift that trunk up the stairs on your own."

"Neither can you," said Harry, sending a pointed look in the direction of John's left shoulder. As if on cue, it gave a sudden twinge and he winced, gingerly rubbing at the scar tissue through his shirt.

"Shut up," he answered through gritted teeth. He needed to change the subject. "Right, so the girl's dormitory is called Wethersfield, which is supposed to be down this path and on the right."

Or was it the left? The map that the secretary had given him was nearly impossible to read and he was fairly sure that he was looking at it upside down.

Harry gave an exasperated sigh and sat down on top of her trunk. She began to pick at the peeling black paint along the sides.

John was about to give up when someone further down the path began to wave at him. He gave a limp wave back and the figure broke into a run.

_Shit. How have I already done something wrong on the first day?_

"John? John Watson? Is that you?" It was a boy, heavyset with sandy hair and wire framed glasses, his face red from his run.

"Mike," John said, watching as Mike swiped at his forehead. "Erm- hi."

"I was on the lookout for you," Mike replied, holding out a damp hand for John to shake. "Heard you were coming."

"How?" John was genuinely curious. He hadn't spoken to Mike since he was nine.

"Facebook," Mike said quickly. His eyes fell on the bundle of papers John had crumpled in his fist. The secretary had printed them out for him: a map of the school, his schedule, and an envelope containing a pale blue slip of paper with his rooming assignment and his key which he hadn't opened yet. "Here, let me have a look at who your roommate is. I'll see if you've got a normal bloke or some complete weirdo."

Before John could say anything in reply, Mike had taken the envelope out of his hands, ripping the flap as he opened it. He fished out the paper, dropping the key into John's palm, and squinted at it.

"Right, so you're in Baker of course, because that's the boys' dorm…and you're in 221…good so you're just a few doors down from me and Anderson. You'll have to meet Anderson, though I'll warn you- he's a bit of a prat. And your roommate- oh."

(It wasn't a particularly encouraging oh.)

"Who is it?" He leaned in closer to Mike, craning his neck to read the paper. Next to the words Roommate was printed in small black letters Sherlock Holmes. "Who's Sherlock Holmes?"

"He's…" Mike sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Impossible to describe and impossible to deal with. He's absolutely bloody brilliant- I mean really smart, scary smart. But I'd imagine he'd make an awful roommate. Good luck, John." He clapped John on the back, grinning at him as if John's awful roommate was a particularly funny joke.

(Then again, John was fairly sure that someone who had nightmares that made them wake up screaming also fell into the category of awful roommate, so they'd be a matched pair, him and this mysterious Sherlock Holmes.)

"Here, I'm on my way to Baker anyway. Want me to show you the way?" Mike's face was growing redder and he looked desperate to get out of the blazing late August sun.

"That'd be great. Harry, are you okay to-"

But Harry had already set off on her own down the path, lugging her trunk stubbornly behind her despite the fact that it was twice her size. Mike chuckled.

"Harry doesn't get on well with you, I take it?"

"Harry doesn't get on well with the world."

They started making their way towards Baker Hall, a tall building made of red bricks that sat slightly apart from everything else. Boys accompanied by parents were carrying in their things, talking and laughing and jostling each other.

"How are you though, John? I heard about- well, you know. I'm sorry. That's awful." Mike's expression was the same one he'd seen on the faces of everyone around him for the past three months, a mix of sympathy, pity, and _oh thank God this didn't happen to me._

"How did you- right, Facebook. I'm fine."

When Mike's expression didn't change, John added, "Really, I am."

Mike gave him a sad little smile and John had to suppress the sudden and violent urge to punch him.

"So, what is there to do around here?" he asked, desperate to change the subject.

"Honestly? Not all that much. I mean, there's the town which is about a ten minute's walk, but that's all quaint touristy shops and old people. Other than that, it's mostly just cows."

So Harry's prediction that all St. Bart's had to offer was cows and John was true after all. He tried to tell himself that he wouldn't mind the boredom, that the peace and quiet of the countryside would be a nice break after the constant thrumming rattle and hum that was London.

(It wasn't worth the effort to try and convince himself of that.)

The inside of Baker was noisy, filled with parents and students filing up and down the narrow staircase bearing trunks and bags. Mike had disappeared into the crowds and John was left standing alone in the lobby.

"'Scuse me," he asked a man wearing a gray wool three piece suit despite the fact that it was a sweltering day in August. The man looked too young to be a parent and was definitely too old to be a student, and there was a faint swelling along his waistband, indicating a slight plumpness that was hidden well by his suit's immaculate tailoring. "Could you tell me where room 221 might be?"

The man looked down at John as if he were something particularly nasty that he'd found on the bottom of his shoes. At the mention of the room number, his mouth quirked into something that John would've considered a smile if he hadn't been sure that the man had never once smiled in his life.

"Up the stairs, take a left, door at the end of the hallway."

John nodded his thanks and made his way towards the stairs. When he attempted to lift his trunk off the ground, his shoulder exploded into a bright blossom of pain that left him seeing dancing black spots. He only made it to the landing halfway up before he had to stop, leaning his head against the cool glass of a windowpane and ignoring the curious looks of those around him.

_Great. The first day and already I'll be known as the cripple. Fucking fantastic._

When the stabbing throbs had subsided into a dull ache, John picked up his trunk again, gritting his teeth against the pain. At the bottom of the stairs, he could see the man in the suit watching him intently, then turning sharply on one heel and vanishing into the crowd.

By the time he made it up the stairs, he had broken the skin on his lip from biting it in pain and he could taste the metallic tang of iron and salt in his mouth. He dropped his trunk and dragged it behind him for the rest of his walk.

The hallway was very clearly the residence of teenage boys. Loud music thumped from behind closed doors, shouts echoed through the hallways, and already the faint odor of unwashed socks and Old Spice hung in a thick cloud.

The crowds thinned out as he neared 221, the number of people dwindling away until he stood alone in front of the door. It was slightly ajar and he realized with a sudden twist of nervousness that the mysterious Sherlock Holmes was probably already inside.

 _No use in waiting_. He knocked the door open with his foot and slipped inside, trunk thumping along behind him.

The room was small, with a window featuring a view of the sports fields behind Baker Hall. Each half of the room had a bed with a lumpy looking mattress, a desk, a bedside table and a dresser, but the similarities ended there.

One side of the room was somehow already cluttered- books piled up in teetering stacks on the desk, papers in haphazard towers climbing towards the ceiling from the bedside table and along the floor. A trunk lay half unpacked on the bed, a uniform lying neatly folded on top of the dresser along with- _Jesus Christ, was that a skull?_

The other side of the room was stark and utilitarian, the bed stripped of sheets, the bedside table empty save for a lamp and an alarm clock. John supposed that was his side.

The room appeared to be free of any roommates, (awful or otherwise) and he hefted his trunk up onto his bed, doing his best to ignore the stab of pain, and began to unpack.

"It was a car accident, wasn't it?"

A boy's head had appeared from underneath the other bed, looking at him with unsettling gray eyes. His dark curls were covered in a fine layer of dust, the remnants of a cobweb tangled throughout.

John jumped, dropping his armful of shirts.

" _Jesus Christ_ \- what the fuck are you _doing_ under there?"

The boy emerged from underneath the bed, unfolding his lanky frame. He stood several inches taller than John, but he was unbelievably skinny. He blinked down at John, his eyes searching him in a way that felt oddly familiar.

"Some of my experiments are sensitive to light. I needed a dark place for them."

"Experiments? What do you mean exper-" John began, but the boy cut him off, holding out a hand.

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Right. Of course." Oh God, Mike was right. He had gotten a nutter for a roommate. "And I'm-"

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"John Watson. Let's see- you're from London obviously, but based on your faint trace of an accent you weren't raised entirely there, somewhere up north, I'd say. You took an early train in, but your parents didn't stick around to help you move in, leaving you to manage both yourself and your younger brother- quite a feat, I'd imagine, considering the pain your shoulder must be in and the fact that you had a panic attack this morning, in the train lavatory of all places if I'm not mistaken. You and your younger brother don't quite get on, despite your best efforts. You'd like to think that's just a phase but in reality it's because he most likely blames you for your mother's recent death, which brings me back to my original question."

He stopped and waited, looking quite pleased with himself.

"Well?"

(John knew that there were several things he should be saying to his new roommate, something along the lines of "How on earth did you know all that?" or "Don't ever mention my mother ever again," or "Is it too early to switch roommates?")

But all that came out of his mouth was, "Sister. Harry's short for Harriet."

Sherlock's nose wrinkled. "Damn. The rest was spot on, though?"

John nodded, aware that his mouth had fallen slackly open.

Sherlock grinned. "I'll be better than Mycroft yet," he said, though this seemed to be mainly a comment to himself.

"That was amazing. I mean, really spectacular. Jesus Christ. How could you know all of that?" John was still standing stock still by his bed, head spinning. He supposed he should be angry with Sherlock for bringing up his mother, but to be honest, he was sick of everyone around him tiptoeing around the topic for the past three months. It was a relief to finally have it out in the open.

(Besides, it was difficult to summon up any real anger towards Sherlock, difficult to summon up any sort of feeling besides _this is brilliant._ He _is brilliant_.)

Sherlock rolled his eyes and disappeared back under his bed.

"Easy," he said, his voice slipping out from the dark gap. "Your train ticket is still sticking out of your pocket, so that gave me half of it. The pain in your shoulder is evident, as well as the distinct absence of your parents to help you move in. If your mother had been alive, then obviously she would've wanted to come see you off, whereas a father is more likely to leave using work as an excuse."

"The car accident?"

"Your shoulder is healed enough for you to use it but still obviously painful, which indicates a recent injury. You don't seem overly athletic, so not sports, and the way you try your best to ignore it despite the obvious pain suggests a traumatic incident, most likely one associated with a loss of someone close to you."

"But all of that about Harry-"

"You're wearing a sock clearly meant for someone smaller than yourself, a younger sibling most likely. And I can tell you don't get on because she seems to have scratched a rather poorly worded death threat into the paint of your trunk. Rather malicious for a ten year old, isn't she?"

"You've no idea," John said as he inspected his trunk, which indeed had the words "I hope your ceiling caves in on your head" scratched into it. (A threat that might've been slightly more effective if ceiling hadn't been spelled _ceeleng_.)

"That was extraordinary, you know that, right? I mean you must know that you're a proper genius."

From underneath the bed came an exasperated snort.

"Of course I know I'm a proper genius. Then again, compared to half the idiots at this school, even _you'd_ be considered a genius."

John was about to respond, his mouth opening to ask whether this was an insult or a compliment, but he decided he'd rather not know.

"You really think that was extraordinary though?" Sherlock's head had emerged from beneath the bed again. One hand gripped a petri dish filled with some rather furry looking pink fungus.

"Of course it was! I mean, you just told me my entire life story just by bloody looking at me! What else would it be?"

"Intrusive, rude and impertinent. At least according to nearly everyone else." Sherlock had disappeared back under the bed again, his voice far away and muffled.

John laughed at that and there was a quiet chuckle from under the bed. He turned back to packing.

"So what's your story then?" he asked, scooping clothes out of his trunk and laying them in the empty dresser drawers. From underneath the bed he could hear a rather ominous banging noise. "Seeing as I can't bloody figure it out based on the paint on your trunk and the way your shirt is buttoned and all that."

"It's really not- _oof_ \- interesting," Sherlock said. There was a loud clatter from under the bed and he could hear Sherlock's deep baritone muttering several choice curses. "Mother, father, older brother, all that rot. Not worth wasting my breath. Why does your sister blame you for your mother's death?"

John stiffened. Sherlock figuring out that his mother was dead was one thing, but confessing the details of her death on the first day they met was another thing entirely. He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat, desperately hoping that Sherlock was wrong about this particular fact.

"Bit of a private question, don't you think?"

"Well, roommates ought to know the worst about each other. I'd rather know sooner rather than later if you arranged some sort of accident for her so that I'd know to be on guard around you."

John didn't realize until after there was a long stretch of silence that that had been Sherlock's rather poor attempt at a joke, as if he was trying to put John at ease after prying too far into his personal life.

"Sod off, you idiot, or I'll arrange an accident for _you_."

This made Sherlock laugh, which made John laugh, and they laughed like idiots together until Sherlock tried to get up too quickly from underneath the bed, whacking his head with an audible _thump_ on the bedframe, which sent them both into peals of laughter again.

That night, for the first night that entire summer, John slept soundly.


	2. Chapter 2

            John awoke the next morning feeling strangely rested. He hadn’t had any nightmares, the sun was shining through his window, and his alarm was oddly silent considering the fact that it was supposed to have gone off at 6:30 and it was now-

            _Shit. Shit. It’s 7:30. Oh shit._

He sat bolt upright and scrambled out of bed, sheets tangling around his feet in his rush, causing his arms to pinwheel rapidly as he tried to keep his balance. He whisked his t-shirt off and tried his best to sort out his uniform, all too aware that the buttons of his shirt didn’t match up and his tie hung undone around his neck. It would have to do for now.

            The other bed was suspiciously empty, the sheets pulled tight over the bedframe, as if Sherlock hadn’t even slept last night. Apparently, Sherlock hadn’t felt any need to wake John before he left. On his trek across campus to the dining hall, John grumbled to himself, cursing his own bad luck both to have overslept and to have gotten a roommate who seemed to be totally unaware of his existence when it didn’t suit his own purposes.

            The dining hall was sunny and warm, a low current of conversation swirling throughout. Students sat around round little tables, all talking and laughing over eggs and tea, and suddenly John felt the first brief flicker of panic low in his belly as he realized that he knew virtually no one at the school. He began to search the room for an empty table, or at the very least, an empty seat with people who didn’t look overly intimidating.

            Just when he had given up and resolved to take his breakfast outside to eat alone on the grass, he saw a familiar head of dark curls sitting alone on the sill of a high window, bent over a book, no food in sight. Perfect. Just the person he needed to see.

            John marched over towards the window, winding up towards a long lecture about how allowing your roommate to oversleep and then find his own way to the dining hall on his very first day was not at all acceptable.  Sherlock hadn’t even noticed him; he was tucked up with his long legs bent at the knees, back resting against the side of the frame. John cleared his throat loudly, but he didn’t receive even the slightest acknowledgement of his presence.

            “Sherlock, you should’ve-“

            “I take two sugars, no milk thanks.” Sherlock didn’t even look up from his book, just dog-eared a page with a crisp motion and kept reading.

            John stared at him, words having fled from his mouth, unsure of how to respond.

            After a long moment, Sherlock looked up from his book, blinking up at John with a slightly annoyed look on his face.

            “What is it?” He seemed genuinely confused about the fact that John was still standing there.

            “You let me oversleep this morning, very nearly making me late for my first day of classes, and you expect me to get you a bloody cup of tea?”

            “Well, you were about to go get one for yourself, so I don’t see why not.”

            John’s mouth opened and closed several times and then he turned sharply on one foot, fully intending to get his food and then leave the dining hall. Yet when he reached the self-service counter with coffee and tea and juice, he found himself pouring tea into two of the waxed paper cups rather than just the one and spilling two spoonfuls of sugar into one of them. He put the cups onto a tray along with the least stale looking pieces of toast that he could find and made his way back towards the windowsill, sloshing tea as he walked. He settled himself next to Sherlock on the narrow sill, tray balanced on his knees.

            Once again, Sherlock didn’t even look up from his book, but instead simply held out a pale hand. John pushed a piece of toast into it.

            Sherlock broke away from what he was reading and frowned.

            “This isn’t tea,” he said, turning the toast over in his hand and holding it at a slight distance, as though it might sprout teeth and bite him at any given moment.

            “No, it’s not,” John said amiably, spreading his own toast with jam and butter. He bit into it and instantly made a face of disgust; despite all his best efforts, he had somehow managed to pick a piece of toast that seemed to have been baked several months ago. He forced himself to chew and swallow, chasing it with a swig of tea. Sherlock shifted in his spot and accidentally kicked John rather hard in the hip, causing him to choke and splutter.

            “I’m not hungry,” Sherlock announced, dropping the toast into John’s lap as he coughed. He glared at him, eyes watering from his coughing fit, and snatched the book out of his hands, replacing it with the toast.

            “Eat something.”

            Sherlock rolled his eyes and took a bite of toast (and John had to wonder how it was possible to _chew_ aggressively), purposely sending a spray of crumbs everywhere that settled over John’s shirt and trousers.

            “God, you’re such a bloody child,” John said as he leaned down to rummage through his school bag. He retrieved his schedule, which was lying in a crumpled ball at the very bottom, and smoothed it out, squinting down at it to see where he was off to after breakfast.

            Before he got the chance, Sherlock had plucked it out of his grasp, ignoring his shout of protest.

            “We’ve got Literature together,” he announced, chewing thoughtfully on his crust. “And Art History, both of which are utterly useless classes.”

            “I’m ecstatic at the very thought,” John muttered, snatching his schedule back.

            Sherlock said nothing, but John could’ve sworn he saw a quicksilver grin flash across his face as he turned the pages.

            “What is it exactly that you’re reading that’s so bloody fascinating?” he asked, trying to peek at the spine of the book.

            In lieu of a proper response, Sherlock held up the book. Printed on the front in block letters was the title- Toxicus: A Study of Fatal Poisons and their Applications. John glanced at the cover, then frowned slightly.

            “Sherlock, I-“

            Something in Sherlock’s eyes went dark and he snapped the book shut, gathering up his school things.

            “If you’re going to ask me if I’m some sort of murderer or maniac, the answer’s no. And if you’re going to be like the rest of our pedantic classmates and tell me how morbid it is or what a freak I am, then you can kindly piss off.”

            John stared up at Sherlock, slightly unsure of what to say after the sudden outburst. His new roommate seemed to run hot and cold, rapidly spiraling from somewhat friendly and darkly humorous one moment to glacial and forbidding the next.

            “Er-no, I was just going to ask you how I find Montague Hall. But do people usually think you’re a murderer?”

            Sherlock gaped at him a moment, then suddenly there was that flicker of a smile again, so quick that John had barely seen it.

            “Sometimes, yes.” He chuckled quietly, although this seemed to be in response to some private joke of his own rather than anything John had said.

            John was trying to think of a polite way to ask when that particular scenario had occurred when from outside the dining hall came the resonant pealing of church bells. This seemed to be some sort of cue, as the students began to stand up, gathering up schoolbags and clearing off their breakfast trays. They filed out through the double doors, some clutching cups of coffee or tea, others still attempting to eat their entire breakfast while walking. He turned to ask Sherlock again where Montague Hall was so that he could make it to history somewhat on time, but the other boy had melted into the crowd, leaving John standing alone once again.

            Right. Well then.

            He picked up his schoolbag and made his way through the now deserted dining hall. It would appear that he was on his own.

 

 

 

            The rest of the morning was a blur of dull teachers and awkward introductions. Everyone at St. Bart’s seemed nice enough, but it was clear that the social boundaries had been drawn long ago, leaving John an outsider. Which was fine in its own way, because the mundane little details of small talk and gossip about people he hardly knew were tedious enough and he’d only be here for a single year.

            At lunch, Sherlock was nowhere to be seen, so he sat at Mike’s table, feeling rather lost as their conversation filled with inside jokes and old memories swirled around him, as if he were adrift on an unfamiliar sea. They were all friendly enough- a girl with sandy hair and a bright, braces-spangled smile had been nice enough to walk him to his next class after lunch- but there definitely didn’t seem to be room for John in their enclosed circle.

            In biology, his lab partner, a boy with shaggy dark hair whose name he hadn’t quite caught, had laughed outright when John told him about Sherlock.

            “Sherlock Holmes?” the boy asked incredulously between gasps of laughter. He was leaning back dangerously far in his chair and John was struck with the sudden urge to knock him over. “Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes? Oh god, you must be having me on. I mean, he’s a freak! Jesus, I feel bad for you, mate. He’ll probably murder you in your sleep or something. Oh god, Sherlock Holmes, good luck with that.”

            John bristled unexpectedly at this, his body tensing and his shoulder giving a faint twinge. He turned to face the front of the room, keeping his eyes off the boy.

            “Well, I think he’s brilliant,” he said through gritted teeth. Beneath his desk, he gave the boy’s chair a swift kick

            Whatever his lab partner had to say in response was cut off by the clatter of his chair to the hard tiled floor below and his faint groan. Their teacher looked up from passing out the syllabi.

            “Ah, Mr. Anderson, it appears that you can’t handle the responsibility of sitting in the back row. Come sit up front where I can make sure you don’t harm yourself or someone else with your antics. Miss Hooper, kindly take his spot next to Mr. Watson in the far back corner.”

            Anderson picked himself up off the ground, still moaning, hand pressed to his lower back, and his empty seat was filled by a girl, her light brown hair pulled back in a tidy ponytail. She gave John a shy smile as she slid into the seat and he smiled back weakly.

            “Molly,” she whispered as she pulled her things out of her bag and set them out on the table. Her notebook was covered with pictures of boy bands and kittens that had been printed out and pasted on the cover, her name written in painstakingly neat letters at the top.

            “John,” he replied. “John Watson.”

            For some reason, upon hearing his name, she instantly sat up straighter, her smile growing slightly wider as she leaned towards him with interest.

            “Are you _that_ John Watson?”

            He wasn’t aware that he’d done anything yet to make himself _that_ John Watson, so he hazarded a guess.

            “Erm…yes?”

            Her smile turned into a full-fledged grin and the tips of her ears went slightly pink.

            “What’s he like to room with? Does he talk in his sleep? Oh no, what am I saying, he almost never sleeps. Oh, you’re so lucky that you get to sleep with him.”

            John raised an eyebrow at that and Molly flushed, hand flying to her mouth.

            “Oh! Oh no, not like that. No, what I meant is- I mean, what I was trying to say is- oh, never mind.”

            “Molly, it’s alright. I understand what you were trying to say. And he’s…well, he’s interesting, I suppose. Definitely not as bad as people make him out to be, but certainly not without his difficulties.”

            As Molly peppered him with questions about what Sherlock was like as a roommate, John realized that Sherlock, clearly through no effort of his own, had gained himself an admirer. It was odd thinking of Sherlock being in a proper relationship with anyone; he seemed so mercurial and unpredictable, so wholly absorbed in himself, that any attempt at a relationship wouldn’t have a real shot at getting off the ground. It was a bit sad to think of, to be honest.

            Molly seemed to have no idea how impossible a relationship with Sherlock might be, based on the way that she seemed to be prattling on about him. He felt bad for her honestly- it was obvious how mad for him she was and she was kind of endearing, in a mildly annoying sort of way.

            “Molly,” he began as they packed up their things at the end of the hour. “Does Sherlock have any friends? Not even best friends, just…anyone at all?”

            She shook her head, resting the strap of her bag across her middle.

            “No one. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s lasted this long with you.”

            “How do you mean?” They had left the classroom and were weaving their way through the jostling mass of people, circling around knots of students standing in corners, talking and laughing.

            Molly frowned, eyebrows pulling together worriedly.

            “Well normally, and don’t tell him that I told you this, but normally he doesn’t even last through the first night with a roommate. This is his fourth year here, and every other year, he’s gone down to administration on the very first night and made a fuss about his roommate until they give him a single room. He’s never even lasted one whole night with a roommate, let alone a night and a morning.”

            John’s eyebrows shot up at this. “Really?” He knew Sherlock could be demanding, but that was a bit extreme, even for him.

            “Mhm. As far as I know, you’re the only one who he’s stuck with so far.”

            John felt oddly flattered by this and was about to respond when suddenly a woman slipped out from a side hallway, stepping directly into his path. He stopped short, nearly knocking her over.

            “John Watson?” she asked, not glancing up from her Blackberry. Next to him, Molly whispered goodbye and scurried off in the direction that they’d came from.

            “Yeah, that’s er- that’s me.” The woman looked up from the glowing screen for a moment, as if to confirm that yes, he was actually John Watson. She was disarmingly pretty but her face seemed deliberately vacant, a carefully practiced mask.

            “Come with me,” she said, starting off down the hallway without bothering to check to see if he was following. John stumbled along behind her. They seemed to be taking a purposely confusing route, a long string of turns and trips up and down staircases. The hallways, which had been filled with students, soon emptied out as class began.

            “I’ve got to go French class,” he said as they walked up yet another flight of stairs.

            “That’s nice,” she answered, her fingers flying over the keyboard. When he tried to get a peek at her screen, he saw that her texts were switching effortlessly between English, Russian and what appeared to be Farsi.

            “We’re here,” she announced, turning a key in a seemingly random door in a dim, empty hallway. It opened onto a classroom that obviously hadn’t been used for years. The glass of its high windows was dingy, sunlight streaming through broken panes at the top. Cobwebs hung in heavy shrouds in the corners and everything seemed to be covered in a thick layer of dust. There was no furniture left in the room, save for a few cardboard boxes stacked in the corner and a single chair in the center of the room. The woman shut the door, the key turning rather ominously in the lock, and John realized that this might not have been his best idea.

            “Ah, Mr. Watson, I presume.” The voice was soft and clipped and strangely familiar, echoing from a dark corner out into the empty room.

            “What’s all this about? Who are you?” He tried his best to sound brave, but his voice shook slightly.

            “Forgive me for lurking in the shadows. I fear that a flair for the dramatics runs in my family, as you may be well aware. Besides, staying in the shadows and out of sight is a rather important part of my job, and I am loath to separate myself from my work.”

            A man stepped out of the corner, middling height, with gingery hair, and slightly plump. He couldn’t have been out of his early thirties at the absolute most, but the fact that he was wearing a three-piece suit made of dark wool, combined with his rather dour expression, made him appear much older. The smile he gave John was tight, as if his face wasn’t used to the expression, and John realized where he had seen him before.

            “You were at Baker Hall yesterday,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at the man. “You told me where to find my room.”

            “Indeed. Well, why don’t you take a seat, John? Or at the very least, you could put your bag down. Your shoulder must be hurting you- car accident, wasn’t it? May 25th of this year, outside of London, struck head on by a drunk driver with one fatality, yes? Take a seat, Mr. Watson.”

            John shook his head, balling his hand into a fist and digging his nails hard into his palm, trying to control the swift, sickening rush of panic and anger.

            The man rolled his eyes and drummed his fingers against the side of his trouser leg.

            “I see my brother’s stubbornness has rubbed off on you. Pity. He’s a terrible influence.”

            “Brother?”

            The cold smile was back again. “I believe introductions are in order, albeit rather one-sided ones, seeing as I already know your name. Mycroft Holmes. You’ve already met my little brother, I trust.”

            Another Holmes. Well, suddenly the ridiculous theatrics and general insufferableness made much more sense.

            “You’re…you’re Sherlock’s older brother?” He couldn’t quite picture Sherlock with a brother, let alone a proper family. He tried to imagine a young Sherlock playing football in a grassy backyard or making believe that a tree house was a pirate ship, but failed.

            Mycroft Homes gave a put upon sigh.

            “Much to my eternal exhaustion, yes. But I’m not here to discuss Sherlock, Mr. Watson. I’m here to discuss you.”

            “Me?”

            “But of course. I’d be quite remiss not to meet the one boy in four years that my brother hasn’t rejected on sight. Quite a remarkable feat, I assure you. If I didn’t know Sherlock better, I’d say that he’s fallen for you.”

            The tips of John’s ears went quite pink.

            “He’s not- we’re not- I’m not interested in-“

            “It’s quite alright John, it was a jest. I didn’t bring you here to speculate on Sherlock’s love life, or lack thereof. I came to offer you a…partnership of sorts.” His tone was careful, delicate almost.

            John wasn’t sure that he wanted to be involved in anything that involved having Mycroft Holmes as a partner. There was something about the man that didn’t seem quite right; his mannerisms were too meticulous, his expressions too practiced.

            “A partnership?”

            “I’d be eternally grateful if you were to supply me with information on what sort of things my brother is up to- nothing overly prying, just little details. In exchange, I suppose there’d be a monetary compensation. I’m sure covering the tuition for you and Harriet would do quite nicely.”

            The inside of John’s mouth went dry. The Watsons weren’t poor by any means, but they certainly weren’t rich and he knew that Bart’s had a rather hefty price tag. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, the offer was incredibly tempting.

            (And besides, it wasn’t like he’d be telling Mycroft Sherlock’s innermost secrets. The little details of everyday life meant nothing, right?)

            “Why do you want me to spy on him?”

            This time, Mycroft’s smile was genuine, although slightly pained looking.

            “I worry about him. Constantly.”

            “Sorry, but I won’t do it.”

            Surprise flickered across Mycroft’s face, instantly hidden by a mask of cool displeasure.

(To be fair, John was just as surprised as he was. He’d fully intended to say yes.)

            “You’re very loyal very quickly, Mr. Watson.”

            “I suppose you could say that.”

            The man gave a little sniff, and then began to make his way towards the door.

            “You’ll be hearing from me again, John Watson. Do keep an eye on my brother for me, would you? He has the most alarming tendency to find trouble everywhere he goes and I’m afraid that there seems to be a bit of a storm brewing.”

            John rolled his eyes. Heaven save him from the Holmes brothers and their dramatics.

            “Oh and don’t bother going to French. The hour’s nearly up and if I remember correctly from my time at St. Bartholomew’s, Madame Bertrand does not appreciate _étudiants tardifs_.”

            With that, the door shut behind him and Mycroft Holmes was gone.

            A moment later, the woman (Mycroft’s assistant, he realized now) opened the door.

            “I’m to take you back to your room,” she said absently, not once looking up from her phone. The light from the screen gave her face a ghostly bluish-white cast.

            “That’s fine. I can get back on my own.” John was itching to get away from the strange events of the afternoon. Something about the older Holmes made him deeply unsettled, as if he’d glimpsed something that wasn’t supposed to exist.

            “Suit yourself,” the assistant replied. He waited until the clicking of her heels down the hall had faded away and then slipped out of the empty classroom alone.

 

 

 

            When John got back to 221, he found Sherlock hanging upside down off the side of his bed, hands clasped across his chest. It looked like a cross between prayer and some ridiculous new form of acrobatics. Sherlock didn’t acknowledge him, but somehow in the past twenty-four hours John had learned to anticipate that.

            “Met your brother today,” he said as he tried to fish his mobile out of the bottom of his schoolbag, doing his best to keep his voice light and conversational.

“Did you really?” For once, Sherlock’s tone actually sounded slightly interested. “What for?”

            His mobile had two new text messages- one from his father, asking how his first day had been, the other from a private number, telling him to call if he decided to take up the offer after all. “Some rubbish about oncoming storms and living in the shadows. He’s a bit of a prat, isn’t he?”

 “The very embodiment of the word. Did he offer you money to spy on me? Actually no, better question- did he offer you money to help him cheat on his diet? That’s a more plausible scenario.”

            John chuckled. “No, although from the looks of him he doesn’t need help cheating on his diet. Although he did ask me. To spy on you, that is.”

            “And did you accept?”

            “No, although he did offer to cover both me and Harry’s tuition. But I’m not going to be the sort of person who spies on my roommate. Besides, your brother gives me the creeps.”

            It was Sherlock’s turn to laugh, a low baritone rumble that caused him to slip several inches down the bed.

            “He has that effect on everyone. He frightens off small children and the elderly. But thank you for not accepting his offer. I would’ve realized that you had within the week, of course, and would’ve changed what I allow you to know immediately, but it’s the thought that counts, I suppose. Besides, I’d prefer to keep Mycroft out of my personal life as much as possible.”

            “I can see why.” John felt a sudden stab of guilt remembering how he had planned on accepting Mycroft’s offer. It was becoming more and more clear that Sherlock needed someone on his side. “Also, I think you might have a bit of an admirer.”

            “An admirer?” Sherlock’s voice was careful but there was an obvious undercurrent of excitement. “Who?”

            “Molly Hooper. She’s my lab partner in biology. She really seems to fancy you. Wouldn’t shut up about you once the entire class.”

            Sherlock made a noise of derision. “Oh,” he scoffed. “I thought it might be someone who actually recognized my intelligence, not some juvenile infatuation.”

            It was John’s turn now to scoff. “How unlucky for you that some poor girl fancies you. Though I really can’t quite see why. Tell me, was it your naturally cheerful nature or your refusal to eat or sleep that drew her to you?”

            “Don’t be tiresome, John. Anyways, Molly’s little crush is useful in that her father is the chief pathologist at the local morgue, so anytime I need to get in, I just-“

            John cut him off, feeling slightly appalled.

            “Are you telling me that you use her fancying you as your ticket into the morgue? Sherlock, that’s…that’s-“

            “Not good?”

            “Bit not good, yeah.”

            Sherlock wrinkled his nose, sliding down lower on the bed so that his curls nearly brushed the floor. “I don’t see why not. She feels flattered that I’m paying attention to her, I get into the morgue with no questions asked. Everybody wins.”

            John was about to open his mouth to tell Sherlock that there was a difference between flattery and manipulating someone’s feelings when the chapel’s bells began to toll. The bells rang four times then paused and then rang another four times. He tried to remember what that was supposed to mean.

            “Four times- that’s a school wide assembly right? But why are we having an assembly now? Class just ended.”

            Sherlock fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs then leapt up, scrambling for his jacket. He seemed unnaturally excited for an assembly.

            “Sherlock, what is it? It’s an assembly, not the second coming. Calm down.”

            But it seemed that Sherlock was in a world of his own. He was waiting for John impatiently by the door, practically jumping up and down in his haste to leave the room. His eyes were bright, his face slightly manic.

            “Sherlock?”

            Sherlock turned his attention on him, his grin wolfishly unsettling.

            “John, unless I’m quite mistaken, which I never am, there’s been a murder.”


	3. Chapter 3

            The auditorium was nearly filled by the time that Sherlock and John arrived. Students hung around the edges in little clumps, talking and laughing and milling about, oblivious to Sherlock’s dire prediction about the news that the assembly would bring.

            John scanned the rows for two empty seats. He spotted Harry (who had been avoiding him all day and who had already found a little coterie of friends) and Anderson, who was in a dimly lit corner, messily snogging a girl with warm brown skin and dark curls.

            Ugh. That was something he didn’t particularly need to see.

            “John!” He turned at the sound of his name. It was Molly, sitting in the middle of a row of seats, waving one hand at him. She indicated the two empty seats next to her that were covered by her cardigan. “John!” she shouted again, nearly smacking someone next to her in the face with her wildly pinwheeling hands.

            “Jesus Christ,” John muttered, giving Sherlock’s arm a sharp yank. “Come on, Sherlock.”

            They did their best to avoid people’s feet as they made their way through the seats towards Molly (John kept up a steady stream of _sorry’s_ and _excuse me’s_ ; Sherlock on the other hand glared at anyone who dared to look the least bit upset when he stepped on top of them.)

            “Hi John,” Molly said when they reached her, moving her cardigan off the seats and onto her lap. “Hey, Sherlock. Erm. Hi. Hi.” Her face turned a deep pink and she turned away, twisting a lock of hair around her finger so tightly that her fingertip went white.

            Sherlock, it seemed, was oblivious of this, and swept past Molly to sit on John’s right side.

            “I was right,” Sherlock said as the last few stragglers began to file in. “There was a murder.”

            “How could you possibly know that?” John asked, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice. After Sherlock had made his abrupt announcement in their room, he had refused to say another word about the possibility of a murder, ignoring all of John’s questions on the walk over from Baker to the auditorium.

            Sherlock opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a sudden squeal of microphone feedback.

            “Sorry, sorry” the headmaster said somewhat sheepishly as he fiddled with the microphone. He was a short, balding man with thick glasses and an ill-fitting tweed jacket. “Ahem. Students. There’s been an…unfortunate incident in the town earlier this morning. Now, it poses no risk to our campus here, but we felt it would be best if we informed you all.” He stopped there to clear his throat several times, wiping at his forehead with his sleeve. “Detective Inspector, if you’ll…?”

            “Right. Yeah, right.” A man in his thirties, his hair a silvery gray that made him look much older, took the headmaster’s spot at the lectern. “Early this morning a woman was found dead in an abandoned house outside of town.”

            The auditorium, which had been thrumming with a low hum of whispered conversations and the plastic _click click click_ of fingers tapping on mobile phones, went silent. Nest to him, John saw Sherlock’s quick flash of a self-congratulatory smile, and he frowned in disapproval.

            The detective smoothed out his tie and continued.

            “Now, the woman’s not a local, nor is she related to anyone in town or a tourist of some sort. As far as we know, she has no link to the town or the school whatsoever.”

            “Wrong,” Sherlock muttered, fingers tapping out a wild, impatient rhythm on the knee of his trousers. “She may not be related by blood, but she’s most likely got some sort of link to the town besides the fact that she was murdered here.”

            “Sherlock,” John said in warning, keeping his gaze dead ahead.

            “The police believe that this may be an incident of foul play. However, I’d like to reassure all of you that none of you are in any danger whatsoever. We believe that this is an isolated incident and that the culprit will be apprehended as soon as possible.”

            “Also wrong,” Sherlock murmured and then winced when John gave a swift, sharp kick to the shins, as well as a stern look.

            “Please, John. If this was some sort of isolated incident, then why here? Why take her far away from her home just to kill her here? There’s more to her murder than what they’re telling us.” Sherlock’s statement was punctuated by his returning John’s kick except much harder and John bit down on a curse.

            ( _Christ._ It was just his luck that his colossal prat of a roommate also happened to be fairly strong, at least when it came to kicking people in the shins.)

            “…And again, although there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, I cannot stress how important it is that you remain vigilant and cautious. Don’t go out at night alone, always tell people where you’re going, don’t go off with strangers. Just use your heads. That’s all.”

            The detective inspector stepped away from the lectern, pulling his mobile out of his pocket, and was replaced by the headmaster once more.

            “Thank you, Detective Inspector Lestrade. You’re now dismissed, but please remember that dinner’s in two hours and-“

            But his words were cut off by another piercing whine of feedback and then by the sounds of several hundred students trying to leave en masse through one set of doors.

            When John finally managed to escape the confines of the auditorium, it was nearly five minutes later. He turned around to look behind him for Sherlock, but he was nowhere to be found.

            Great.

            Sherlock didn’t come back to 221 either, nor to dinner that night, which John spent with Molly. When she wasn’t asking him a thousand inane questions about Sherlock, she was actually really enjoyable to be around. They talked about university and about what they wanted to go into as a career; she wanted to be a doctor too, albeit one who worked on the dead rather than the living.

            “No, no but you get used to corpses after a while, really,” she said, waving her forkful of pasta in the air to underline her point (Molly’s habit of moving her hands around enthusiastically when talking had ended up with John nearly getting speared by her fork at least twice during dinner). At seeing the look on John’s face, she laughed. “Okay, I know it sounds ridiculous and completely creepy, but you do, honest. You just…you can’t think of them as people, yeah? I’ve spent so much time helping Dad out in the morgue after Mum died that I must’ve gotten immune to it or something, I swear.”

            “Your mum died too?” The question was out before he could even stop himself. ( _Shit._ _Shit. That was an awful thing to say. That’s the worst thing to say. Shit._ ) “No. No, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. Christ, I’m sorry.”

            But Molly just rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, honest. It was cancer. She died when I was seven so I don’t really even remember her all that well to be honest.” She smiled, and John realized that she was trying her best to put him at ease. “But your mum is…?”

            “Yeah. Drunk driver. Just this spring.” He didn’t dare look up at Molly’s face, just stabbed at his pasta with his fork, digging his thumbnail hard enough into the side of his index finger to draw blood.

            Molly gave a slow exhale. “God, John, I’m sorry. That’s…that’s really awful. God.” She reached out a hand, and for a second, he though she was going to pat him on the shoulder, but she pulled back at the last moment.

            He was ready to give his usual (bullshit) response about how it was fine and how he was pulling through it all, but instead, what came out was, “Yeah. Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” His voice was surprisingly hard and angry and he waited for Molly to shrink back.

            But she didn’t (and he swore that the next time he saw Sherlock, he’d punch him in the face for taking advantage of a girl like Molly Hooper). Instead she just nodded and chewed thoughtfully on her pasta.

            “You’re worried about Sherlock,” she said, taking a swig of her water. It wasn’t a question.

            “What? No, I’m not.”

            “Yes you are. You keep checking the doors every two seconds to see if he’ll walk in. It’s fine. He does this. Just disappears for a few hours and then returns and won’t tell anyone where he’s been.”

            John, who had been looking towards the door while she said this to do just that, rolled his eyes

            “And he doesn’t ever get in trouble for this?”

            “His family’s staggeringly rich, apparently. And he’s brilliant, so he can earn the marks even if he doesn’t show up to class.”

            He remembered Mycroft Holmes’s promises that afternoon, the offer of his tuition paid in full, the way that Sherlock automatically expected to be waited on. Suddenly, everything made _much_ more sense.

            Sherlock was still missing when John came back from dinner, and he spent the night alone in his room, doing what little homework he had from his first full day of classes. Before he went to bed he called his father, whose voice was quiet and a bit nasally ( _he’s been crying_ , a nasty little voice in the back of John’s head announced.) but who seemed happy that John and Harry were settling in well. His father made him promise to bring Harry up to London to visit sometime before the end of the month, as well as to make a visit to Ella while he was there. John didn’t have the heart to argue.

            He slept restlessly that night, and awoke sometime after midnight after a particularly nasty nightmare, breathing hard and drenched in a cold sweat ( _the dead woman in the abandoned house was actually his mother and the roof was caving in and the walls were buckling and the headlights the white headlights were crashing into the house oh god oh god oh god-_ ). He muffled a sob into his pillow and lay facedown for a bit, trying to slow his breathing. ( _It’s not happening again_ , he told himself. _The crash is over. It wasn’t your fault._ ) ( _It was,_ said that nasty voice in his head. _It was._ )

            “It’s just a dream, John. Go to sleep.” The voice came from the darkness on the other side of the room.

            “Sh’lock?” he slurred, sleep already sweeping over him once more.

            “Go to sleep.” The voice was slightly gentler than before and he was about to say something in return, but sleep overtook him and the world went black.

            Sherlock wasn’t in breakfast the next morning, but he was in Literature second period. As their teacher handed out copies of _Hamlet_ , Sherlock stared dead ahead, seemingly unable to hear anything that John was saying.

            “Sherlock! Sherlock, are you listening to me? Where in hell did you disappear to last night?” John hissed, moving his desk as close as possible to Sherlock’s. When he got no response, he whacked at his arm with his copy of _Hamlet_ , but Sherlock stayed stock-still.

            “Ah, Mr. Watson. Is there something you and Mr. Holmes would like to share with the class?”

            “No, ma’am.”

            “Then I’m sure you’d be more than happy to read the part of Marcellus in Scene I.”

            It was the same case in Art History, a stony, impenetrable silence that seemed to apply not just to John but to the world at large. When their teacher had asked Sherlock a question, she’d had to repeat it three times until Sherlock finally gave some sort of a response, an answer that was correct but dripped with condescension and contempt despite being monosyllabic. By the time that biology came around, John was on his last nerve.

            “Is he always like this?” he asked as he and Molly took notes on the anatomy of plants. Molly’s notes were neat to the point of obsessive, each letter perfectly formed and placed on the page.

            “Who, Sherlock?” Even discussions about Sherlock, it seemed, weren’t enough to distract Molly from her textbook. He had to give her credit- when she was committed to things, it was really all or nothing.

            “Who else? He hasn’t said a word to me or anyone else all day except to belittle our art history teacher and essentially call her entire course and field of study ‘worthless and frivolous.’” He didn’t choose to mention his nightmare the night beforehand.

            “Always. You just need to decide whether or not he’s worth putting up with things like this for. You need to decide if he’s worth it.” Molly’s voice was far away and John noticed that she was several pages ahead of him in notes.

            _Fuck it. Fuck him_. He turned back to his notebook.

            When he got to French that day, he was greeted by a very worried woman with a head full of frizzy black curls.

            “ _Jean!_ Jean Watson! Mon pauvre garçon! Comment vous sentez-vous? Venez, venez po.” She grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him into the classroom, depositing him in front of an empty desk.

            (Shit. When was the right time to tell her that he only remembered about twenty words of French?)

            “Er…bonjour, Madame Bertrand? Erm…bien?”

            Madame Bertrand blinked down at him several times and then laughed, switching over to thickly accented English.

            “Pardon me, dear. I was asking how you were feeling? Food poisoning is terrible, _non_? I blame all the English food this school serves. Too rich, yes?”

            “…Yes?” (So Mycroft had given him a nonexistent case of food poisoning, it seemed.)

            “Yes, well you’ll be partnered with Sarah here for the year,” Madame Bertrand said, pointing down at the desk next to his, where the braces spangled girl from Mike’s table at lunch yesterday was sitting down. She gave him a shy smile and he tried his best to smile back.

            “Here,” she said when he slipped into his seat. She handed him a thick bundle of papers held together with a paper clip. “I got doubles of everything that she handed out yesterday.”

            John nodded his thanks and began to leaf through the papers, heart sinking when he saw that most of them were entirely in French.

            “Food poisoning, huh?” Sarah’s eyes were bright, her mouth quirked up in a smile.

            “It would seem so,” John said, slightly absentmindedly. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he didn’t want to get on Madame Bertrand’s bad side on the first day, and he ignored it.

            “That’s funny because you looked rather well when at the assembly yesterday,” she said, the little smile spreading into a full on grin. “Not that I was looking, of course. I’m Sarah Sawyer, by the way.”

            “John,” he answered, allowing himself to smile (and he found that he actually did want to smile, because something about her put a certain brightness in his chest). “John Watson.” His phone buzzed again in his pocket, this time more insistently.

            “You might want to get that. Whoever it is seems really impatient to speak to you,” Sarah added.

            He slipped his phone under his desk and read through the two messages that had been sent to him since the start of class.

            _Front gates. Come at once if convenient. –SH_

He rolled his eyes. Sherlock had to know that he was in class. Even if he didn’t value his education, John certainly did. He didn’t honestly just expect him to _leave_ during the middle of class, did he?

            _If inconvenient, come anyway. –SH_

            Oh. Apparently he did.

            ( _Don’t do this_ , he told himself. _Stay and learn how to speak French badly with Sarah who’s pretty and smart and who seems to be taking somewhat of an interest in you._ But at the same time, he could hear Molly’s question from biology- _is he worth it?_ )

            (Yes.)

            He raised his hand and waited for Madame Bertrand to see him before beginning.

            “Madame, I really need to-”

            “ _En Français_ , _Monsieur Watson_.”

            Shit. Shit.

            “Um…J'ai besoin utiliser…”

            “No, no it’s _d’utiliser_ ,” Sarah whispered under her breath.

            “Erm- d'utiliser la salle de bain parce je…je…”

            He frantically looked towards Sarah for help, but realized that she had no idea what words he was trying to find. The class, as well as Madame Bertrand, stared at him expectantly as he desperately tried to remember how to say that he didn’t feel well in French. Finally, in a last ditch effort, he pantomimed being sick, clutching his hands to his stomach and hunching forward.

            (God, the things he put up with for Sherlock.)

            Madame Bertrand gasped, and she instantly made a shooing motion with her hands.

            “Of course, of course, _Jean_. _Vite, vite_. Do you think you can make it to the washroom without…?”

            “I think I can manage.” He tried to make his voice sound as weak and woozy as possible.

            His ears burning slightly with humiliation, he scurried out of the room. (Well, there went any chances with Sarah.)

            Sherlock was waiting for him by the front gate, arms crossed, looking incredibly impatient.

            “I said, does your mobile take pictures?” The exasperated tone in his voice made it seem as if this hadn’t been the first time that he’d asked this question, and John realized that this was probably the truth.

            “Sherlock, you do know that I was on the other side of the campus? In French class, which I’m quite keen on not failing despite my miserable French speaking skills?”

            Sherlock’s eyebrows pulled together, and he looked slightly confused.

            “And?”

            John sighed.

            “Never mind. Yes, My mobile takes pictures. Where is that we’re going?”

            “Police station,” Sherlock said, vaulting gracefully over the low brick wall. From the other side, John could hear him talking about questions that needed to be asked and files that needed to be requested.

            John swung one leg up, then the other over the wall and clumsily slid down the other side, glaring when Sherlock gave an ill-concealed snort.

            “Would you shut up, you bloody prat? Jesus Christ. And why are you dragging me out of class now when you wouldn’t say a word to me this morning?”

            Sherlock rolled his eyes and started down the road, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. It seemed as if he hadn’t bothered combing or drying his hair that morning, because it stuck out at all angles, dark curls springing out every which way. Somehow, it suited him.

            “Don’t be dramatic, John. I didn’t _drag_ you out; you came of your volition, there’s a huge difference. And sometimes I don’t speak for hours on end. It’s the only way I can _think_ without all the noise of ordinary people cluttering everything up. If that bothers you, I suggest you find a new roommate.”

            John jogged a few steps to keep up with Sherlock’s long strides. “Please. Now it’s you who’s being dramatic. I just was asking why you weren’t speaking. I didn’t say I wanted a new roommate.”

            Sherlock frowned, seemingly taken slightly aback at this.

            “Oh. Well, alright.”

            They continued making their way down the road for another ten minutes, falling into a companionable sort of silence. Once they’d left the school behind, long stretches of meadow closed in around them, the yellow-green grasses reaching up high enough to cast shadow on the road, the midafternoon sun warm on the backs of their necks.

            John had only seen the town from the windows of the cab two days before. It was small and practically embodied the word quaint; every building was tidy and rustic looking, the sort that his mum would’ve called charming. The whole effect was like something off a postcard, which made the squat blockiness of the police station all the more jarring.

            Before they stepped inside, Sherlock leaned in towards John, his eyes suddenly very serious.

            “Just follow my lead, do you understand? Don’t say anything unless you absolutely have to.”

            John tried his best not to scoff.

            “Yes, ta for that. Are you also going to tell me that I can’t have any dessert tonight at dinner unless I clear my plate and that my bedtime is 8:30 at the latest?”

            “Very mature, John.”

            The inside of the police station was all hideous powder blue cinderblock and particleboard, but it was blessedly air-conditioned. Sherlock approached the front desk.

            “I need to see Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade. It’s urgent.”

            The officer sitting at the front desk took his eyes off the program on the television for just long enough to note that it was just a boy standing in front of him.

            “Sorry kid, but-”

            “Try running this through the system.” Sherlock had pulled a white identification card out of his wallet and was holding it out to the man, who typed a few numbers off the card into the computer.

            After a moment, the man gasped, his face turned a sickly green by the light of the computer screen. “My sincerest apologies, Mr. Holmes. DI Lestrade’s in his office. I’ll buzz him and let him know you’re on your way.”

            “Thank you.” Sherlock’s tone was glacial and he swept past the man’s desk, plucking his ID card out of his hand without a second glance.

            “What on _earth_ does your ID card do?” John asked once he had caught up with Sherlock. They were currently making their way down a long hallway made almost entirely out of brown linoleum. (The whole effect was one of rather spectacular ugliness.) 

            “Gets me into any place, any time, no questions asked. Well, mine doesn’t. But Mycroft’s does.”

            “You’ve got Mycroft’s ID card?”

            “Mm. I stole it from him on Moving Day. Easy as anything. Mycroft’s a pompous ass who thinks that he’s infinitely more intimidating than he is."

            “I could say the same for you.”

            “Oh piss off.”

            DI Lestrade’s office was tucked away in the back corner of the station, the door slightly ajar. Without bothering to knock, Sherlock brushed past John and went inside. Lestrade was sitting at his desk, doing paperwork, a paper cup of coffee clutched in his hand.

            He started to speak without even looking up. “Listen, if this is just something for a school assignment, then-“

            “My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is John Watson. We need to see the files on the woman who was murdered yesterday morning.”

            Lestrade looked up at, leaning up in his chair and trying to suppress a grin.

            “We don’t exactly go around giving out files on open investigations to every fourteen year old kid who asks for them.”

            “Fifteen.”

            “What was that?”

            “Nothing.”

            Lestrade opened his mouth to begin to speak again, but Sherlock cut him off.

            “I know that you haven’t been working in the countryside long, that you’ve just come from a long stint at Scotland Yard in London. You didn’t leave in disgrace, but there were definitely some rather suspicious circumstances, my best guess being that your wife cheated on you…with a PE teacher? Ugh. You came down here for some peace and quiet and to get away, although you take the eighty minute round trip ride back to London about three times a week to see your children, a boy and a girl, yes? You quit smoking six months ago, and it’s incredibly difficult for you, though you haven’t given up yet, and you’re not settling in here well. Now, can I _please_ see the murder files?” Sherlock’s voice had grown louder and louder throughout only to drop down to deadly quiet at the end. He stepped back with a satisfied little smile, and John and Lestrade gaped.

            “How did you-“

            “Don’t ask him, you’ll just encourage him,” John said, trying to keep some control over the situation. “Can we please see the files?”

            Lestrade sighed, rummaging around on his desk. “Five minutes. No more than that and you can’t take anything with you or tell any of your little school friends the things that you see. Got that?” He handed them a thick manila folder that was bound together with rubber bands.

            Sherlock went through it page by page, telling John what to capture with his mobile’s camera, all the while keeping up a constant stream of narrative as he pieced together what he was reading.

            “Tabitha Brooks, aged 37, a rare book dealer from London who was born in Bath, no children, no husband. She was found dead in the cellar of 129 Allen Street, which has been abandoned for years.”

            There was a picture of the house, a decrepit, moldering old structure that loomed large and out of place in comparison to the tidy houses and shops next to it.

            “Workmen yesterday morning who were supervising the building’s demolition to provide space for the bookstore next door to expand found the body. Estimates indicate that she’d been dead roughly…six- no, seven hours prior. She’d been bound and gagged, though that had been removed by the murderer post mortem and was found lying face up with…an apple in her hand?”

            Sherlock looked towards Lestrade for confirmation, who nodded. There were pictures in the files, of a woman with dark hair lying on her back, eyes staring up sightlessly at something unseen, an apple indeed clutched in her right hand.

            “She seems to have been dead by the time that she entered the cellar, because there were no signs of struggle there. There were no outward wounds, and early autopsy reports indicate…poison? Really? Interesting. No signs of any motivation- no money or jewelry was taken from her, no known enemies. Nothing left behind at the crime scene except for something nailed to the wall above her…what on earth is that?”

            Sealed in a plastic bag was what appeared to be a yellowing page from a children’s book. The top of the page had an image of a beautiful girl biting into an apple, an old hag lurking at the edge of the picture. Beneath the image were several lines of text in German.

            “Snow White,” John whispered, taking a picture of the page. “The woman, Tabitha Brooks- she’s meant to be Snow White. It’s like a fairy tale.”

            “That’s it,” Lestrade said, getting up from his desk to take the file back, ignoring Sherlock’s sound of protest. “That’s five minutes. You two are lucky that I gave you that much.”

            That night, they sat in their room, John trying to concentrate on _Hamlet_ despite the fact that his mind was filled with poisoned women and fairy tales, Sherlock lying on his bed, hands clasped across his chest. John would’ve sworn that he was asleep if he didn’t burst out in random exclamations about the murder every few minutes.

            “Oh. _Oh!_ ”

            “You’ve got something?” He put _Hamlet_ down, marking his page.

            “The page from the book- it wasn’t to explain the crime. I mean, it’s all fairly obvious. Dark haired woman, poison apple, etcetera, etcetera. No, it wasn’t explanation at all. And that’s why they took her body here to be found, when they could’ve just as easily done it in London.”

            “They…wanted to send a message?”

            “Exactly, John. Her death served as a message to someone in town. But why fairy tales? And who was it for? And why did she need to be killed for it?”

            “You’re asking me these questions as if I’ve got the answer.”

            “No, I don’t expect you to. You’re far too unaware of what’s going on around you.” When John opened his mouth to respond, Sherlock waved a hand at him. “Oh, don’t be like that. You know what I mean.”

            “Besides,” Sherlock continued, rolling off his bed to fish around in his drawers for his pyjamas. “There is one thing we know for certain.”

            “What’s that?” John asked, trying to conceal his yawn with the back of his hand.

            “Tomorrow, we need to take a trip to Allen Street.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

The next day was anything but a normal Tuesday.

It began when John was awoken at 5:30 by what sounded like a muffled explosion and the sudden, overwhelming scent of sulfur. Eyes stinging and watering, hand clapped over his nose and mouth, he forced himself to count backwards from ten before he found Sherlock (who was nowhere to be seen and was almost definitely behind this) and punched him in the nose.

Their closet door swung open and a cloud of steam poured out, the already pervasive rotten eggs smell intensifying. Sherlock was in the corner, one hand pinching his nose closed, the other fanning the steam out of the closet.

“Sherlock, what the _hell_ are you-“ John began to sputter, but Sherlock waved him off.

“It’s fine. The fumes aren’t poisonous. Although I’m afraid your jumper’s a bit of a loss. I’d apologize but I think I’m doing you a favor; it’s the particularly vile Fair Isle one.”

John stared at him, open mouthed, then pulled his covers over his head and tried to go back to sleep.

(This ultimately failed due to the fact that every time he inhaled, he got a noseful of sulfur.)

Sherlock didn’t attempt to make any sort of amends for the incident that morning, although he did lean over John’s shoulder as they sat together at breakfast, squinting down at John’s biology homework that he was trying to finish before class.

“Number one is A, number eight is D and number thirteen is C and based on the questions that your teacher’s assigned, you’re almost definitely having some sort of surprise exam today, so you’ll want to prepare yourself. And the fumes weren’t poisonous, honestly, so you can stop worrying about that already.”

“Erm…thanks,” John said as he began to erase the incorrect answers that he’d already penciled in. “And I wasn’t worried about the fumes. I trust you.”

Sherlock blinked in surprise, and then rolled his eyes. “First mistake, John. Also, after classes today, we need make a visit to-”

“Hi, John. Um, good morning, Sherlock. Mind if I join you two?” It was Sarah, holding a cup of tea and a bowl of yogurt, giving them a hesitant little smile. Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy braid, but a few pieces stuck out stubbornly (and something about that made John’s stomach do a nervous little twist, and he grinned involuntarily.)

“No, of course not,” he said, pulling out a seat for her at the same time that Sherlock said “Yes, actually I do.”

Sarah’s smile faltered and she moved to stand back up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that-”

“No, no it’s fine,” John said tightly, kicking Sherlock under the table as hard as he could. “Isn’t it, Sherlock?”

“Of course,” Sherlock answered, scraping his chair back and scooping up his books. “I’ve got to go. Front gates after class, John. Don’t forget.” With that, he left the dining hall, still trailing a faint scent of sulfur in his wake.

(John wondered how long it would be before he killed the bastard in his sleep.)

“Is he always like that?” Sarah asked, swirling granola into her yogurt and looking intently at Sherlock’s vacated seat.

“Almost always, yeah. And sorry for that, by the way. He didn’t mean it, honest.”

Sarah laughed. “It’s fine, John, really. Where are you two going after school? I swear, it’s like all you do is sneak off campus with him. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were a couple or something.”

The tips of John’s ears went pink and he choked a bit on his toast.

“What? Me and Sherlock? No, god no. We’re not…no. And we’ve got to go do a…a thing. A thing in town. An errand.”

Oh god, he really did sound like an idiot.

But Sarah just gave him that bright grin again (and his stomach was a nervous knot by this point and he wondered if this was what hell was like: stammering like an idiot when talking to a pretty girl and having to deny accusations of dating your roommate.)

(Most likely, yes.)

“A thing in town? Why, John Watson, I think you’re keeping secrets from me,” Sarah said with a grin, elbowing him gently in the ribs.

(Oh god, was that flirting? Was she _flirting_ with him?)

( _Be smooth_ , he told himself.)

“Um. Did we have French homework?”

(And that was the end of that, because even John knew that flirting was practically impossible when all you could think to bring up was your _bloodyFrenchhomeworkohgodIamsuchanidiot._ )

The rest of the day went by blessedly fast. Art History was made tolerable by Sherlock scribbling down deductions about their classmates and slipping them onto John’s desk on neatly folded bits of paper (although John nearly got them caught by squeaking slightly at the one that read _Girl two rows ahead of us with the peroxide blonde hair has STD_ and its sequel _Got it from our Art History teacher_.)

(After that, Sherlock’s deductions grew increasingly outlandish, and John grew more and more scandalized until he looked over to see Sherlock’s shoulders shaking with silent laughter and he realized that he had been tricked.)

(And he knew he should be angry, but despite himself, he started laughing too.)

At the end of French, Sarah leaned over and whispered, “Have fun on your secret date with Sherlock in town.” The ends of her braid brushed against John’s shoulder and his ears burned pink again.

“He’s not my date,” John muttered as he shoved his books into his bag.

“Good,” said Sarah. Before he could think of anything to say in response, she’d turned a corner in the hallway and had disappeared.

Sherlock was waiting in the same spot as the day before, eyes locked on the screen of his mobile. When John approached, he looked up for a second and then immediately went back to typing.

“You did well on your Biology exam, didn’t you?” he asked without glancing up once. When he finished typing out his text, he tucked his phone in the pocket of his trousers and hopped over the wall.

“How’d you know?”

“Despite the fact that you’ve almost definitely got reading assigned tonight, you don’t have your Biology textbook with you. Overconfidence is the surest path to failure.”

John rolled his eyes, clambering ineptly onto the other side of the wall. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But speaking of Bio, I talked to Molly today. She said her dad’s already done the autopsy on Tabitha Brooks.”

Sherlock stopped several paces ahead of him and waited for John to catch up. “And?”

“No signs of any real struggle, no scratches or cuts or anything like that. And there’s traces of a neurotoxin in her bloodstream, the same neurotoxin that the apple was laced with. One bite, that’s how potent it was. One bite was enough to kill her.”

Sherlock frowned. “But if the poison was in the apple and not delivered through an injection or something of that sort, how could they force her to take it?”

“Maybe she just thought it was a normal apple?”

“Please,” Sherlock said with a derisive snort. “She was bound and gagged before she was killed, John. She had at least some knowledge of the situation. But how would you force someone to poison…did Molly say anything about bruising? I know there were no signs of a struggle, but any light bruising?”

John took the folded piece of paper out of his pocket and skimmed over his notes on what Molly had told him.

“Actually, yeah. Besides the bruises from the bindings on her wrist and ankles, there was a round bruise right along her hairline.”

“A gun,” Sherlock whispered.

“Pardon?”

“She _was_ forced to take the poison, although the killer wanted to make it appear voluntary, as if she hadn’t known the apple was lethal, just like the real Snow White. The killer was pressing a gun to the side of her head.” Sherlock demonstrated this by poking a finger very hard into John’s temple.

“Hence the bruise.”

“Hence the bruise, exactly. Whoever this message is for, the killer’s very intent on seeing that it’s received. It would’ve been a lot less effort just to shoot her rather than going to all the trouble of arranging a scene out of a fairy tale.”

“It would’ve been a lot less effort to just not murder her altogether.”

Allen Street was a dead end tucked away in a back corner of the town, lined with a few small shops and houses. The end of the street was dominated by a ramshackle house that looked like it was a strong gust of wind away from collapse. The front gate was festooned with bright ribbons of yellow crime scene tape.

“Sherlock, looking through the files and the autopsy reports are one thing, but breaking into a crime scene is-”

“Not what we’re doing here today.” Sherlock had only given the moldering wreck of a house a second’s glance; instead, his focus was on a tidy little shop that they’d stopped in front of.

“And it’s almost definitely illegal to- oh. It’s not?”

“Of course not. The murder was over two days ago and it didn’t even occur at the house. There’s nothing of use there.”

“Then why are we here?”

“I need to see a man about a book.”

Above the shop was a sign that read in slightly faded red letters PECK’S USED AND RARE BOOKS. It looked as if it had been there nearly as long as the decrepit house, but it looked neat and cheery, despite the fact that the books in the display window were covered with a thick layer of dust.

“If anyone in town would know anything about the storybook page left behind at the crime scene, it’s the bookshop owner. Besides, Brooks was a rare books dealer. She might’ve done business with Peck at some point.” From his bag, Sherlock took out and unfolded a sheet of paper- the picture from John’s mobile of the page from the crime scene, blown up to full-page size and photocopied.

“So what are we going to do, just go in there and say ‘Oh yes, hi, we’re just two school kids who just so happen to have evidence from the recent murder that’s supposed to be for police eyes only could you please tell us more about it?’”

“Yes.” With that, Sherlock swept through the door, leaving John standing alone in the street. John stood there for a moment, wondering when his life had become so utterly strange, and then followed Sherlock into the shop.

The bell above the door jingled as they walked in, but the store was seemingly empty, no one manning the checkout counters or standing between the long rows of shelves. The lights gave the room a cheery, albeit slightly fluorescent glow, and heavy beams of sunlight streamed through the high windows.

“Hello? Mr. Peck?” John called out into the empty store. Sherlock had disappeared into the labyrinth of shelves and darkness.

From a back room, there came a rustling and a small old man wearing a sweater stained with mustard emerged.

“Can I help you boys? Are you looking for something in particular?”

“We need your help with a rare book, sir. For a project. A school project.”

(God, where was Sherlock when he needed him?)

Peck frowned. “A rare book? And you two are St. Bart’s boys? Well, come into my office, I suppose.”

John followed Peck into the back room, nearly jumping out of his skin when Sherlock melted away from the shadows to fall in behind him. Peck’s office was cramped and cozy, filled with overstuffed armchairs, teetering stacks of books covering every available surface.

Sherlock took the sheet of paper from his pocket and slid it across the desk to Peck.

“We were wondering if you could tell us where this is from,” Sherlock said, leaning back in his chair and pressing his hands together as he watched Peck inspect the paper.

“I don’t…where on earth did you boys get this?” Peck said. As he handed the paper back to Sherlock, his fingers shook and his face had gone very pale.

“Please, Mr. Peck, could you tell us what it is?” John tried to keep his voice as polite and gentle as possible.

Peck took his glasses off and rubbed at his face with a sigh. He suddenly looked very tired and very small.

“Unless I’m quite mistaken, that’s a page torn from one of the very first printed editions of The Brothers Grimm. Now you have to understand, this would be a very rare book, a very valuable book. For someone just to tear pages out of it…well not only are they destroying something very important, but also very expensive. It’s a tragedy, it really is.”

“Yes, but is there anything important about this book? Anything of recent significance?”

Peck started to shake his head and then paused.

“There is one thing,” he said, opening a desk drawer and rummaging around in it. From it he took a magazine, some sort of antique books collectors quarterly, it seemed, and flipped through several pages until he found what he was looking for. “See that article there? There are only ten copies or so of the very first edition of The Brothers Grimm left in such perfect condition and just last month two of them were stolen from a museum in Dresden. Just disappeared, right under the guards’ noses.”

Sherlock took the magazine from the man, scanning it over quickly. There was a picture of two books, slightly battered looking and bound with brown leather, and the (fairly atrocious, when it came to bad puns) headline A GRIM THEFT.  “And they haven’t been recovered since?”

“No and they probably never will be. They’ll have been sold on the black market by now to private collectors or dealers who aren’t afraid to dabble in the shady side of the business.”

(John had to suppress a snort at the sound of that- the _shady side_ of the rare book business.)

“That’s a shame,” Sherlock said, his voice filled with a hollow politeness. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Peck.”

“But I still want to know where you two got that picture from! Where could you have-?”

But Sherlock was already striding out of the office and turned around for a moment to shout over his shoulder.

“Have a lovely afternoon, sir!”

“Wait!” Peck’s voice was tinged with desperation and John felt a mix of pity and discomfort.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and left the office as quickly as he could.

“You know,” he said once he caught up to Sherlock in the street. “You didn’t need to do that big dramatic exit. Bit rude, really. He’d been nothing but helpful.”

Sherlock shrugged. His attention was fully engrossed in a little book bound in dark green leather.

“Fine. Just ignore me then.”

They walked through the streets in silence until suddenly Sherlock stopped dead in his tracks.

“ _Oh_ ,” he said, so soft that John could barely hear him even though he was only a few inches away. “Oh!”

“What is it?”

“Hungry?”

“What?”

“Hungry, are you hungry?”

(John was hungry, but he didn’t see what that had to do with whatever it was that Sherlock had found in the little leather book.)

“Sure?”

“Follow me, I know a place whose owner owes me a favor.”

John followed Sherlock towards a little café a few streets over. The inside was uncomfortably warm and stuffy with a sticky tiled floor, but there was a heavenly smell, a combination of garlic and flour and basil that made it all too clear to John’s stomach that lunch had been several hours ago.

“Sherlock Holmes!” The man behind the counter broke into a wide grin and came around and clapped both Sherlock and John in a bone-crushing hug. He was staggeringly large with cropped gray hair, and he spoke with a thick accent- Eastern European, probably, or maybe Greek. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“My friend’s hunger, for the most part. Mr. Moldovan, this is John. John, this is Mr. Moldovan.”

There was another bear hug from the man, though this one was just for John.

“Any friend of Sherlock’s is a friend of mine. Though this one is maybe not just a friend?”

John flushed.

“No, we’re not- I’m not his- Christ, we’re just friends.”

Moldovan laughed, a loud, raucous thing that seemed to shake the walls of the café.

“Of course you are. You keep it secret. I understand.”

“No, really we’re not-”

But Moldovan was already steering them towards a little corner table in the crowded dining area of the café.

“Best seats in the house. I’ll be out in a minute with food, don’t worry.”

John fidgeted in his seat, uncomfortably aware of how red his face was.

“Sherlock, doesn’t it bother you that he thinks that we’re-”

“Look at this, John.” Sherlock seemed completely oblivious to what John had been saying, and he thrust the little leather book into John’s face. “When we were in Peck’s office, I nicked his date book- oh, _don’t_ look at me like that- anyways, I nicked his book and look at this appointment from two weeks ago.”

Two Wednesdays ago, there was an appointment written down in smudgy black ink: _Noon- T. Brooks, review new wares._

“So he did business with Tabitha Brooks? D’you think he could have something to do with the murder, then? Known something, maybe?”

“It would make sense. The murder took place only a few buildings away from his store. The message might’ve been for him. He could’ve had something to do with the theft of those books from the museum. After all, you saw how unsettled he was when he saw the page from Brooks’ murder.”

Moldovan had reappeared, with a plate of some sort of flatbread with cheese and bits of olive and chicken and spinach, which took John’s attention off of Sherlock’s for a minute. Moldovan gave them a wink as he walked away, and for what felt like the hundredth time today, John’s ears went pink.

“But why kill Brooks if it was Peck who was involved with the theft?” John asked, his mouth full of flatbread. “I mean, say the book got into Peck’s hands somehow and someone wanted it back. Wouldn’t it be easier just to kill Peck and steal the book back rather than kill Brooks as a warning and hope it works?”

“Brooks might’ve had something to do with the theft too. After all, Peck said that the book had probably been sold on the black market to either a private collector or a dealer who wasn’t afraid to get his or her hands dirty.” Sherlock didn’t have a meal of his own, but was still stealing olives off John’s plate when he thought John wasn’t looking. “If both Brooks and Peck were involved, the killer could just be getting rid of two problems by killing her. He’d be warning Peck that he knew that he had something to do with the theft as well as getting Brooks out of the picture altogether.”

“So you think that Brooks and Peck were somehow involved with the theft but something went wrong- the deal went sour after the book had already passed into their hands, and the thieves want it back from them?”

“That’s a possibility, yes. Peck’s definitely involved in some way. He wouldn’t have had such a strong reaction otherwise.”

John gave a low whistle. “Hard to believe he could be involved in some sort of black market theft ring when he looks like someone’s dotty old grandfather.”

“Judging by appearances alone is for idiots, John.”

“Ta, thanks for that. And I can see you stealing my olives, you bastard. I’m not blind.”

Sherlock gave a low chuckle and proceeded to make a dive for the last olive, which led to John swatting his hand away, which in turn led to them fighting over the plate while trying to hold in their laughter (which led to John seeing Moldovan winking at them from across the room and realizing that they looked an awful lot like a couple and oh fuck his face was red again.)

( _Fuck._ )

 

They hardly discussed the murder or the theft or Peck’s possible involvement in the black market for the rest of the week, except for Sherlock randomly dropping bits of information he’d found into conversation.

(When he’d told John how much money the book was worth, John had spat out tea all over the table. There was no way in hell that a book, a rare book true, but a bloody _book_ could be worth eight million quid.)

But by Saturday morning at breakfast, Sherlock had turned to John and announced that they needed to go back to the bookstore.

“Why?” John had asked, trying without success to catch Sarah’s eye from across the dining hall. “We can’t honestly confront him yet.”

“No, not that,” Sherlock had said impatiently. “It’s the magazine he was showing us. I want to see that article. I haven’t been able to find it online. Besides, I should probably return his date book before he gets suspicious.”

And so after lunch, they’d made the ten-minute walk into town again, this time under a faint gray drizzle of rain. The raindrops matted down Sherlock’s hair, giving him the appearance of a wet sheepdog, and when John had laughed at this, he had given a withering glare and rubbed unsuccessfully at his head.

Once again, when they’d entered Peck’s shop it was empty, with no sign of Peck, although the door to his office was slightly ajar. John took a step forward to go further in, but Sherlock put an arm out to stop him.

“Look,” he said, crouching down next to the closest shelf and beckoning John over. “The shelves have been moved. The dust has been disrupted.”

“You think someone’s broken in?”

“That’s what it looks like, although whoever it was obviously didn’t want anyone to know that they were here. But look at the till. It’s obviously been forced open, but all the change is still there. Whoever it was wasn’t looking for money. They were looking for something else.”

“The book?”

“The book.”

Sherlock slipped into Peck’s office, while John looked behind the counter. Sherlock had been right about the till; there was a dent in the metal from where it had been smashed open, but when John slid it open, all the banknotes were still neatly nestled in their individual drawers.

“John!” Sherlock’s voice was soft, but there was an odd quality to it, a disruption to its usual glacial calm. “John, I think you should come see this.”

Sherlock was standing in the doorway of Peck’s office, which appeared to have undergone the same careful intrusion as the main part of the shop. But the contents of the office weren’t what Sherlock’s eyes were fixed on, or what made John suddenly feel very cold and very dizzy.

On the floor of the office, in a rusty puddle of congealing blood, gun still gripped tight in his hand, was Alfred Peck.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

For a moment, all John could do was wonder at how his life had become so strange, so utterly far away from what could be considered normal or the slightest bit alright in such a short amount of time.

“Oh my god. Jesus fucking Christ, Sherlock. Oh my god. He’s dead. Peck’s dead.” There seemed to be a strange sort of disconnect between his mind and his body, as if he was watching the whole scene unfold from above, and it was all he could do to try to force himself to speak, to force himself to focus on the words coming out his throat rather than the body lying on the floor, blood pooling on the floorboards. (He had to shove down the memories of _that_ night, of his mother’s twisted body still trapped in the passenger seat, his father bloodied and groaning.)

“So it would appear,” Sherlock muttered. He knelt down next to Peck’s body, rolling him over onto his back, skimming his fingers lightly over the man’s head, shifting his battered wire eyeglasses out of the way to examine the neat round bullet wound in his temple. He stood up, began to make his way around the room, not touching anything but taking everything in.

“There’s something not right here,” he announced after several minutes of this.

“What, you mean besides the corpse lying on the floor?”

“Don’t be snippy, John, it’s tiresome. I meant with the room itself. Someone was looking for something in here, just as with the front section of the store.

John shifted uncomfortably in place.

“Sherlock, we really should call the police. In case you haven’t forgotten, somebody’s just _died._ All of this break in stuff can wait until his family’s notified and everything, yeah?”

Sherlock said nothing in response as he scanned the top of Peck’s desk, but John swore he could’ve heard a faint “ _Tedious_ ” from underneath his breath. After a moment, Sherlock pulled his mobile out of his pocket, fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Sherlock, we really need to call-”

“I’m texting Lestrade,” he said without once looking up from his screen.

“How the hell did you get Lestrade’s personal number?”

There was no response.

(Typical.)

Lestrade arrived about twenty minutes later, his face drawn with grim lines.

“Shit,” he said softly when he first entered the office. And then, speaking louder, “What the _hell_ were you two doing here?”  
“We had just needed to ask him a question-”

“A book question-“

“Yeah, a book question for a school project-“

“And the door was unlocked but he wasn’t in the store, so we looked in here and-“

“And he was dead.”

Lestrade frowned and began to examine the body.

“Suicide, looks like, though we can’t rule anything out yet. No other wounds besides the bullet. Did you two hear anything? Gunshots, shouting, anything at all?”

John shook his head. Sherlock was oblivious to anything that Lestrade was saying and had perched himself atop Peck’s desk, hands folded together and pressed up to his lips, staring stonily at the wall.

“Right, well I’ve got to tell his poor wife and get a few men down here and- what on earth is he doing?” Lestrade had stopped mid-sentence in favor of staring at Sherlock, who still had barely moved a muscle.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s always like that.”

It wasn’t until another twenty minutes later that the unit dispatched from the police station arrived and John and Sherlock were unceremoniously forced out of Peck’s office.

(Twenty minutes wasn’t enough time for John to shake the cold, heavy weight in his stomach, the unwelcome familiarity of being surrounded by death.)

Outside the shop, Lestrade sat on a bench with an older woman wearing a cardigan in a horrendous shade of pea green. Her face was blotchy and glazed with tear tracks and her shoulders were shuddering. John took Sherlock’s arm, trying to steer him away from who was obviously Peck’s widow.

“But I don’t understand how my Alfie could just k-kill himself,” she whispered through watery sobs. He was so happy; he had his garden and the shop and the cats and I just don’t understand. He was so _happy_.”

“He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.”

(Jesus Christ. One of these days, he was going to _murder_ Sherlock.)

Mrs. Peck turned towards them, eyes blinking back a fresh fall of tears.

“I’m sorry?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Please. Isn’t it obvious? Your husband was left handed, but he was shot on his-”

Before Sherlock could say anything more to Mrs. Peck (who was looking more and more horrified with each word spilling out of Sherlock’s mouth), John grit his teeth and yanked Sherlock away, digging his fingers hard into his arm.

“Ow. _Ow._ What’s gotten into you?” Sherlock said, his face curled up into a sneer.

“Sherlock, the poor woman’s just lost her husband. Murder or suicide, she doesn’t need to know exactly how he was killed.”

Sherlock gave a long-suffering sigh, tugging his arm out of John’s grasp.

“She’s going to find out sooner or later. What does it matter if I tell her now? It won’t change the fact that he’s dead.”

John shut his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to count backwards from ten to avoid punching Sherlock in the nose.

“Because finding out that someone you love is dead is absolute hell, Sherlock, and I won’t let you make it any worse for her.” His voice was soft and it shook slightly.

(And he had to shut his eyes again, had to swallow hard and try to force out the screech of tires and the way that headlights looked reflected against broken glass or blood’s slick shine against pavement. He had to silently remind himself to breathe.)

When he opened his eyes, Sherlock was staring at him, gray eyes searching his face, lips pressed together in a tight line. It made John feel uncomfortable, exposed, as if he was one of the specimens kept in Petri dishes under Sherlock’s bed, ready for Sherlock to turn him inside out, discover all of his secrets and vulnerabilities, the gaps in his carefully crafted armor.

Sherlock broke his gaze, staring down at his feet. Suddenly, there was the warm weight of his hand on John’s shoulder, long fingers carefully splayed out to avoid the starburst of scar tissue over John’s shoulder blade. He squeezed gently once, twice and then slipped his hand back into his coat pocket, leaving behind a ghost of warmth and weight on John’s skin.

(John knew what it meant, and as apologies went, it was no grand gesture, but it felt like there were whole worlds of intent behind it. Either way, Sherlock’s touch had been so careful, so gentle that John could scarcely connect it with the boy of cold brilliance he knew.)

 

“So how did you know?” John asked Sherlock later as they made their way back towards the school.

“Know what?”

“That Peck was murdered. That it wasn’t suicide. How’d you know?”

Sherlock frowned. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, but there was affection behind it. “First off, like I was saying earlier, Peck was left handed, yet the wound was on the right side of his head. It would’ve required quite a bit of contortion for him to do that to himself. Besides, the connection to Brooks provides a clear motive for the murder.”

“They were looking for the book. They though he had it.”

“Exactly. But I don’t think they were out to kill Peck. Brooks’ murder was incredibly deliberate. It was well planned, elaborately staged, creative even. This was rushed, sloppy. Unexpected, you could say. Peck probably came back earlier than the murderer had counted on, which made them panic, shoot him, and then try to pass it off as a suicide.”

“So what do we do now? The only person we knew with any information on all of this was just killed.”

“Wait for another murder. There’s bound to be more. After all, Peck didn’t have the book, despite what the killer thought.”

“But how-”

“There was no safe or any sort of hiding place for it in his office. Hiding it in his home would only attract those who were searching for it there, and judging by the pictures on his desk, he’s a family man, so most likely very keen to protect them, keep them from the more unsavory aspects of his business. No, unless Peck hid the book in some unknown third location, which is unlikely, I’d say that someone else took the book from Peck, which the killer will soon find out. It would be someone who could be in the area without being noticed, someone he trusted. There’ll be more murders soon, more warning to whomever’s got the book now.”

(God he made it all sound so bloody _simple_.)

They fell into a companionable sort of silence as they trudged back through the meadows towards the school.

And once again, John was struck by the utter strangeness of his life. In less than two weeks, he had switched schools, befriended his (possibly, probably, definitely) mad roommate and visited his first crime scene.

Said (possibly, probably, definitely) mad roommate had walked far ahead of him and, noticing that John was no longer walking next to him, had stopped and waited for him to catch up, trying to make the motion look as casual and unintentional as possible.

John grinned.

He wouldn’t have changed this for the world.

 

Weeks passed. The last hazy days of late summer faded away into an unexpectedly frosty autumn. As the days went on and no new victims surfaced, Sherlock grew increasingly moodier and withdrawn. The amount of foul smelling experiments and snipes at John’s intellect increased, and it made life in 221 practically unbearable sometimes. It didn’t help that Sherlock seemed determined to squash any chance of a relationship that John had with Sarah.

“What on earth are you writing in there? You haven’t looked up from your notebook in twenty minutes.” Sarah leaned over his shoulder, eyes skimming across the lines of French written in John’s neat block print.

French class seemed to be the one place that he could talk to Sarah without Sherlock appearing seemingly from nowhere to announce to the world, but especially Sarah, how John drooled in his sleep or some other random and usually false bit of information that John didn’t need the world to know.

(Besides he did _not_ drool. That was wildly untrue.)

“ _Bien que je voudrais que dire qu'il est mon meilleur ami, Sherlock peut être d'une arrogance incroyable, ainsi que l'ignorance quand il s'agit de connaissances de base_ ,” Sarah read from the notebook before John got the chance to cover it with his hand. “Although I’d say that he’s my best friend, Sherlock can be incredibly arrogant, as well as ignorant when it comes to basic facts. Writing an awful lot about him aren’t you?”

John flushed.

Madame Bertrand had assigned them all journals to write in several weeks ago as a way to practice their composition skills. John’s had started out as just a log of what he did each day (Wake up. Argue with Sherlock. Go to class. Argue with Sherlock. Go to sleep. Get woken up in the middle of the night by Sherlock. Argue with Sherlock. Repeat). But slowly, without any intention of his own, the main subject of his journal entries had become his roommate, a fact which hadn’t escaped Sarah and which she never failed to tease him on.

(Sherlock had gotten his hands on the journal just once. It was right after John had written about the murders, desperate for something to write about and knowing that Madame Bertrand hardly ever read them besides a cursory glance that was mainly to establish the fact that they were actually using French. After making the mistake of leaving his notebook on his bed, he’d come back to the room after dinner to find Sherlock leafing through its pages with a look on his face that was a combination of boredom and disgust.

“I read your journal entry about Brooks and Peck.” On hearing John enter, Sherlock had sat up and thrown the notebook at him.

“What’d you think? And how were you able to read it? You take Latin, not French.” John had tried to catch, or at least dodge, the notebook but it ended up glancing off his head.

“I’m fluent in French. My mother’s from Paris. And I thought that it was an exaggerated, romanticized version of events that added excess hyperbole to provide a cheap sense of thrill and suspense, and that you have no absolutely no grasp of the subjunctive. Also, I resent you characterizing me as icy and rude.”

John didn’t really know what he’d been expecting.)

“What do you mean ‘ignorant when it comes to basic facts’? Isn’t he supposed to be some kind of genius?” Sarah’s voice was soft and unexpected in his ear and John tried his best to ignore the low fizz of warmth in his chest. “Also, you do know that you’re awful at French and the fact that you’re even passing this class is some kind of miracle?”

“Oh leave off,” he said, choosing not to tell her that the only reason he was passing French at all was the fact that most nights he could successfully wheedle Sherlock into helping him with his homework. “And just…he doesn’t know simple things. Primary school things, the sort that everyone knows. Like he didn’t know who painted the _Mona Lisa_ or that the earth goes round the sun.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.

“He didn’t know that the earth goes round the sun?” she asked, her voice incredulous.

“Believe me, I was just as shocked as you are.”

Sarah was silent for a moment, twirling the ends of her ponytail around her finger.

“He’s lucky to have you, you know. Are you sure that he realizes that? Or that you do?”

“I…er-”

“God, I forgot how utterly dense boys can be. But really though, sometimes it’s as if you don’t have a life outside of him. When was the last time you hung out with people besides him, or, oh I don’t know, went on a date?” There was an emphasis on the last four words that even John couldn’t miss.

His mouth without warning went very dry and he had to will his voice to work through herculean effort.

“I have a life outside of Sherlock,” was all he was able to manage.

Sarah grinned and rolled her eyes.

“And you’re the densest of the lot, aren’t you? How about this Saturday, around six-ish? We can go into town, see a film or something.”

Now John was really unable to speak.

( _Say something, you idiot_ , a voice in the back of his head hissed. _Anything._ )

“I can’t.”

(Oh fuck. Anything but _that._ )

Sarah’s smile dimmed, her face falling slightly.

“Oh. I mean, I totally understand, don’t worry ab-”

(Jesus Christ. He had to fix this somehow.)

“No! No, I’d definitely love to…do that. With you. Er. It’s just that I’m supposed to be in London this weekend, visiting my dad.”

(And his therapist, but he chose not to mention that.)

“But really, definitely yes,” he continued, praying he didn’t sound like too much of an idiot. “Next weekend, though. Deal?”

Sarah gave him that bright, brilliant smile again and he felt his face flush.

“Deal.”

 

When John got back to the room that afternoon, he found Sherlock sprawled across his bed, laptop lying half open on his stomach, staring listlessly at the ceiling.

Ever since it had become clear that no murders were going to be committed for the time being, Sherlock had sunk into a black mood. On the rare occasions that he actually moved from his cocoon on his bed, it was to rifle through John’s things despite the fact that John had changed the lock on his trunk three times, or to wonder out loud about the stunning lack of intellect present in John, the population of the school, and the world at large.

Despite the fact that Sherlock’s recent behavior was driving John up the wall, he couldn’t ignore the fact that it also worried him in a way that pressed on his mind constantly.

The lights in the room were off and John stumbled through the darkness, whacking his knee against Sherlock’s dresser. He swore and fumbled for the light switch.

“Honestly, would it kill you to turn the bloody- is that my computer?”

“Yes.” Sherlock didn’t even look at him as he spoke, just continued to stare at the ceiling, his face blank.

John snatched his laptop off of Sherlock’s stomach, opening it up to find a particularly off-putting picture of a foot in a rather advanced stage of decay.

“ _Eurgh_. Jesus, Sherlock, use your own if you’re going to be looking at stuff like this. And I just changed the password on this this past Tuesday.”

Sherlock snorted and rolled over onto his side so that he was facing John.

“Really, John, how long did you think it would take me to guess _Sherlockbuggeroff_? And I can’t use mine. I threw it at the wall and now it won’t turn on. Or maintain any real semblance of a laptop, really. Shame.”

“Well, that would do it.” John began to close through the tabs that Sherlock had had open: page after page of various decomposing body parts and organs.

Charming.

“Anyways, I understand congratulations are in order.”

John looked up from a particularly stomach churning picture of a severed arm.

“What do you mean?”

“You finally managed to successfully proposition Samantha or Sharon or whatever the hell the boring girl with the metal bits on her teeth is named.”

“Sarah. And she asked me out, not the other way around and she’s not boring, she’s sweet. And how the hell did you deduce that?”

“I didn’t deduce. It was on Twitter. She’d tweeted some incredibly saccharine song lyrics about it. It was easy enough to infer whom it was she was referring to, even though she didn’t mention you by name.”

“Since when do _you_ use _Twitter_?”

“I don’t. You left yours open. Believe me, I have as little interest in seeing what our peers feel the need to announce in a hundred and forty characters as I do hearing the drivel that comes out of their mouth in the real world. And you’re wrong. Sarah is incredibly boring. I’d give you two until Christmas at the absolute most. I look forward to reading Sarah’s histrionic break up tweets.”

With that, he rolled off the bed (somehow managing to make nearly falling onto the floor seem graceful, the prat) and retrieved his violin from under his bed. The room was suddenly filled with jarring, screeching notes that sounded less like music and more like the noises that John’s great aunt Mildred’s cat made when his tail was stepped on.

John was about to come up with some cutting reply defending his budding relationship with Sarah, but it appeared that, as usual, Sherlock wasn’t paying attention to him.

Some things, it seemed, never changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this took so long- for such a short chapter, this was weirdly difficult to write. Thank you all so so so so SO much for all the comments & kudos- they're seriously awesome oh my goodness.  
> Next chapter has a certain couple's first date (which may or may not get crashed by a certain jealous roommate.)


	6. Chapter 6

The train to London was stuffy and cramped. John and Harry were sandwiched between a woman with graying hair who smelt strongly of cat food and a plump man reading a newspaper who cleared his throat thickly with each turn of the page.

Twenty minutes in, Harry had finished the copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that had kept her quiet and entertained for the first half of the journey. She threw her head back against the seat and gave an exaggerated sigh, her face made sallow by the flickering fluorescent lights overhead.

“John,” she groaned, her voice muffled by the seat cushion. “Johnny, she said again, louder this time when it was clear he wasn’t paying attention. “I’m bored.”

John ignored her. He was more focused on his phone, which was lighting up with texts from Sherlock deducing the lives of his fellow train passengers based on the details John was sending him. John had realized after the first time that he’d gone to London for the weekend that he needed to keep tabs on Sherlock while he was away, unless he wanted to return with the ceiling plaster above his bed singed like last time. (Between Harry and Sherlock, his life was full of the easily bored and highly destructive.)

Harry kicked him when he didn’t answer her, and he winced.

“Reread Harry Potter or something. I don’t know,” he suggested absently, his phone buzzing in his hand.

_The woman across the aisle is having an affair with her boyfriend’s brother and is en route to London to see him._

_-SH_

John snuck a glance across the aisle where a woman in her late thirties, her dark brown roots showing through her blond bob, was rifling through a coral handbag that would’ve looked more appropriate on the arm of someone a decade younger. He put his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.

“Texting your boyfriend, then?” Harry said, peering over his shoulder to squint down at the screen of his phone.

“Shut up, Harriet.”

“You _are_ , aren’t you? What are you writing? _Dear Sherlock, be mine even though I’m a dumb scrawny git. Hugs and kisses and all my love from-_ ”

She stopped when John clamped his hand over her mouth, his face flushed red. She bit down on his fingers and he pulled away cursing.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever you say.”

 

The flat, which had once felt overlarge and empty, now felt uncomfortable cramped. A painful twist of grief in his stomach, one that John hadn’t felt in a long time, was there to welcome his as he carried his and Harry’s overnight bags into the living room. There was a note left on the kitchen counter, written in his father’s familiar block print:

_Working late. Should be home by 7- order yourselves some dinner._

_J- therapy at 11 tomorrow._

_-Dad_

John swore underneath his breath as he rummaged through their collection of takeaway menus. The last time he’d spoken to his father on the phone, he’d tried to convince him that he really ( _really_ ) didn’t need to see Ella and that he was fine, he was better, couldn’t he see that?

(And for the most part, it was true- he was actually fine. Not great, maybe, but getting better. He hadn’t had a nightmare since the murders.)

(Ella would have a bloody field day with that one, though.)

But his father had insisted and John had to bite back the questions in his throat- _shouldn’t you be seeing someone too, Dad? Are you alright or are you still not sleeping at night and lying about it?_

(And he knew that there was no use asking, because his father was just as good as John as deflecting questions with the same rote responses, the same _I’m fine, just not sleeping well_ over and over again.)

By the time that the front door opened, the food that John had set aside for his father had gone cold, grease pooling at the bottom of the wax paper container of half-eaten chow mein. Despite her best efforts to stay up, Harry had fallen asleep on the sofa thirty minutes ago, the light from the telly flickering over her pale face.

“Sorry about that, Johnny,” his father said as he loosened his tie. He’d lost weight since John had last seen him, his face drawn and gaunt, and his eyes were ringed with bruise-like shadows. He looked more dead than alive.

“No, yeah, ‘s no problem,” John answered around a yawn. He felt suddenly exhausted- by the father he was losing to a deluge of grief, by the flat, haunted by ghosts that he’d tried so hard to shake off. It felt like some old wound being ripped open again and he found himself wishing he were back at school, in the warmth of 221, with Sherlock. He watched his father pick over the Chinese food for a few minutes, never once actually eating, until he felt he couldn’t be in the room a moment longer without screaming.

“I’m knackered. Good night, Dad.” He managed a tight smile and made his way to his room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

John awoke sometime either very late at night or very early in the morning, his head aching and fuzzy. He lay staring at the ceiling for a minute.

He knew it wasn’t fair of him to be so frustrated with his father, but somehow he couldn’t help it, not here in the place that was so filled with memories of what had once been.

He groaned. He was way too groggy to be thinking about things like this, things that made him feel lost in a way that seeped into every inch of him.

John’s hand scrabbled across his bedside table, closing around his mobile. Almost automatically, he opened up a new text message and typed Sherlock’s name into the address bar.

_I swear to god, if I come home to find you’ve done anything to my laptop again, I might actually kill you in your sleep._

Sherlock’s reply came back almost instantly. (Of _course_ he was still up.)

_I’d like to see you try. And besides, it wouldn’t exactly be a great tragedy if I happened to wipe out the porn collection that you call your laptop._

_-SH_

John’s face colored. (He _did not_ have a porn collection.)

_You’re a right bastard, you know that?_

The reply came back a minute later.

_Don’t tell me you don’t appreciate it._

_-SH_

John wasn’t sure how long they want on like that; it could’ve been three minutes, it could’ve been three hours, but eventually his eyes started to grow heavy and he could feel himself sinking back towards sleep.

_Go to sleep, idiot. Your last text consisted of a string of ‘2’s and an exclamation mark._

_-SH_

(John didn’t even see the text, because by that point, his phone had slipped out of his hands and onto the floor as he lay snoring on his bed.)

 

“You’ve made truly remarkable progress since we last met, John. There’s still a long road ahead, but you’ve made some big strides in the past few months.”

John was sitting across from Ella in her office, trying to fight off both antsiness and exhaustion while simultaneously trying to convince Ella that he really ( _really_ ) didn’t need any more therapy sessions. He tried to make out the titles of the books bound in leather that sat in the shelf behind her desk.

While Ella kept talking, her voice soft and careful (All of the therapists he’d seen after the accident had such quiet voices. He wondered if this was something they’d all been taught, some sort of soothing tactic used by therapists worldwide.), he wondered what Sherlock would be able to deduce about her, thought about the way he’d weave her life story out of the nicks on her earrings and the pattern of her skirt.

(God, the things that Sherlock could do. Downright miraculous, like being best friends with some sort of magician. That was really the only way to describe Sherlock sometimes: a miracle.)

Ella kept talking using phrases like “slow but steady recovery” and “lingering trust issues” and he didn’t realize that she’d asked him a question until the silence stretched out for over a minute.

“Er, sorry, what?”

“I asked how the new school was going. Are you enjoying yourself? Making friends, finding a hobby, something?”

He nodded.

(And if by making friends, she meant having your madman of a roommate attach himself to you and by finding a hobby, she meant investigating murders, then yes, he most certainly was.)

(And god, was he enjoying himself.)

 

Harry was sitting in the waiting room, legs tucked up underneath her, fully absorbed in the copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that John had bought her that morning. She had pestered him nonstop about taking her to a bookstore and so before therapy that morning, they’d found one on the way (and John tried not to think of what had happened the last time he’d been in a bookstore.)

While Harry was searching through the children’s section, John had wandered the aisles aimlessly, walking through the narrow, labyrinthine paths of shelves. In the mystery section, he’d found a book bound in green leather about the size of a small elephant and weighing about the same entitled The 100 Grisliest Cold Cases of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

(God, Christmas shopping for Sherlock was almost _too_ easy.)

When he’d gone to collect Harry from the children’s section so they could go pay, there was one title that caught his eye instantly amidst the cheap paperback Harry Potter and Roald Dahl books. Without even thinking, he added it to their teetering pile of books.

Later, he’d wonder if it had possibly been in bad taste. But after all, he was giving it to Sherlock as a Christmas gift, who practically embodied the word ‘morbid’. Besides, it was the closest thing the two of them had to an inside joke.

It certainly wasn’t a first edition that was apparently worth killing over (far from it- it was a battered paperback speckled with coffee stains that had been thrown in the clearance bin), but there was no mistaking a copy of the Brothers Grimm.

 

The rest of the weekend went by blessedly fast. For the most part, it was long stretches of tedium filled with homework and telly and keeping Harry entertained. On Saturday night, though, their father brought home pizza and rented some terrible action movie, the sort where the protagonist is known by only one name, something incredibly masculine like Stone or Blade or Thunder, and who always dispenses awful canned puns after killing his enemies. And for a minute, as they sat on the sofa in the dark, laughing at the unnecessary amount of dramatic explosions and Stone/Blade/Thunder’s foe’s cringe-inducing faux-German accent, it was as if they were alright, as if they weren’t constantly looking towards the empty spot on the sofa and wondering if it was acceptable to be happy. And if somehow watching some overly muscled actor dispatch people with a machine gun while they burned their tongues on pizza sauce helped to keep the grief at bay, then John was alright with that.

It wasn’t everything that they needed. It wasn’t even close.

But it was enough.

 

When John got back to school Sunday evening, he found Sherlock in the same exact position he’d been in when he’d left Friday afternoon, lying on his back, hands pressed together, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Did you even leave the room this weekend?” John asked as he began to unpack his overnight bag. Sherlock turned his head towards him and glared.

“Don’t be ridiculous, John. Did you get what I asked you?”

John rolled his eyes.

“God, I swear I could just drop out of school entirely and you wouldn’t notice. I’ve been in London since Friday.”

“Of course I’d notice, you idiot. There wouldn’t be anyone to interrupt me mid-experiment to drag me to dinner. I’d be a lot more productive.”

“And a lot more malnourished.”

“Which is a small sacrifice in the name of knowledge.”

“Fat lot of good knowledge is going to do you when you’re half-starved to death.”

Instead of replying, Sherlock stuck his tongue out (god, it really was like living with an overgrown toddler) and rolled over onto his side to face the wall.

John grinned to himself as he continued unpacking.

(It was good to be home.)

 

The rest of the week was (relatively speaking) uneventful. John managed to fail two French quizzes in a row, a record low even for him, and Sherlock managed to set their Art History project (a poster about the Dutch Golden Age that had taken John an entire Tuesday afternoon and which he was rather proud of) on fire so thoroughly that all that was left was a neat heap of ashes and a few singe marks on the floor.

(So really, life as usual in 221.)

On Friday, he found himself experiencing a strange combination of excitement and overwhelming, queasy anxiety. It didn’t help that every time that his and Sarah’s eyes met in French that afternoon, they both turned away quickly, blushing furiously.

When he got back to 221 after showering, Sherlock, who had been there ten minutes before, was nowhere to be seen. In his place, though, was an envelope with John’s name written in Sherlock’s illegible scrawl, pinned to John’s bedpost with a pocketknife.

(Sometimes, John wondered what it would be like to have a roommate with normal sleeping hours and eating habits and who sent you texts rather than pinning messages into the furniture with assorted weapons.)

Inside the envelope was a note, hastily written on a sheet of notebook paper:

_John-_

_Sorry about our Art History project. When you go to the cinema tonight, there are tickets reserved under my name for “Larmes, Chair et Pluie_.” _Hope they make up for the (fairly minor, all things considered) fire._

_Enjoy your date._

_(You probably won’t.)_

_-S_

_P.S.- Did you know that statistically most teenage romances fail after three months?_

John had been planning on taking Sarah to see some terrible horror film, one where she’d jump and he’d have an excuse to put his arm around her shoulders, but Sherlock had obviously gone out of his way to try and make amends, although tickets to go watch a subtitled art house French film might not have been his best decision. But it was free and Sherlock had actually thought about someone besides himself for once, which was all that really mattered, right?

(Looking back, John really should’ve seen through it from the start.)

 

He met Sarah in front of the cinema that evening. She’d done some sort of swirly thing with her hair that drew the attention to her face and made it look heart-shaped, and for a minute John was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to speak properly.

“You…er. You look…um. Nice. You look nice.” The tips of his ears went pink and he shifted nervously from one foot to another.

Sarah rolled her eyes, but he saw a hint of a smile as she looked up at the marquee.

“What’s this? I thought you said we were going to go see the one about the haunted campground? _Death in the Woods_ or whatever the hell it was called?”

“I thought we could see this instead? The title translates to _Tears, Chairs, and Rain_.”

Sarah frowned slightly as she glanced at the marquee, and for a moment, John was afraid that she was going to call the whole thing off.

But instead, all she said was, “John, you know the title is _Tears, Flesh, and Rain_ , right? ‘Chairs’ is _chaise,_ with an extra ‘e’ and an 's' and flesh is just _chair._ God you really don’t pay attention in French, do you? And this is fine. Sounds a bit grim, but so is French class, so I suppose we’ll muddle through.”

They made their way to the ticket booth, where a bored looking attendant wearing an ill-fitting shirt with the cinema’s logo and still bearing the traces of teenage acne across his cheeks and nose sat.

“Tickets to _Larmes, Chair et Pluie_ under the name of Holmes, please,” John said.

The attendant rummaged through the debris littering his tiny booth until he found an envelope, from which he pulled two tickets.

“Do you want to go in now or do you want to wait for the rest of your party?”  
John frowned. “What rest of party? There should be only two tickets.”

The attendant gave a long-suffering sigh.

“There’s four, so do you want to wait or-”

“No need,” came an all too familiar voice from behind John. “The rest of the party has arrived.” Sherlock came forward, slipping past John to grab the remaining two tickets from the attendant’s hand. Molly trailed behind him, her hair loose and wavy around her shoulders, looking incredibly ill at ease. She gave John a look whose silent message was all too clear- _I had absolutely nothing to do with this._

John bit his lip, shut his eyes, and forced himself to count backwards from ten. Then, when he felt that he could speak without screaming, he turned towards Sherlock.

“Sherlock,” he said through gritted teeth. “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing here?”

Sherlock gave him an innocent half smile, though there was something cold and calculating in the depths of his eyes.

“Here to watch the latest piece of fine French cinema with Molly,” he answered. His tone was pleasant and polite and utterly not his own.

“Which just so happens to be the same exact film that I’m going to go see. With Sarah. On a date.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how coincidences occur?”

“You don’t believe in coincidence.”

Instead of answering him, Sherlock turned away to give Molly her ticket. John pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Sarah, I am so sorry about all of this, really.”

She gave him a strained smile.

After a few more minutes of standing uncomfortably in front of the building, they began to make their way into the theater. The only other people sitting in the hushed darkness was an elderly woman and a man who, despite being indoors and in the dark, was wearing sunglasses.

Before John could take his seat, there was a tug on his arm and he was pulled aside to a corner. Expecting it to be Sherlock, he yanked his hand out of their grasp and turned around, already prepared to lecture him on why his behavior this entire night had been incredibly fucked up.

But it wasn’t. It was Molly, her pale face practically glowing in the darkness of the theater, her eyes wide and concerned.

“You know why he’s doing this, right?” she whispered. John rolled his eyes.

“Because he’s a prat who can’t cope when the focus isn’t on him for once. No need to defend him, Molly.”

Now it was Molly’s turn to roll her eyes.

“God, you two are both so dense. Honestly, it’s amazing you haven’t noticed yet.”

“Noticed what?”

“He’s jealous,” Molly said, flicking her eyes towards the front of the theater to make sure that Sherlock wasn’t listening.

(What the hell did John have that Sherlock could be jealous of?)

“Of _what_?”

“Oh please. Don’t tell me you don’t see it. Every time he looks at you, it’s like-” She cut herself off there, biting at her lip as if to prevent more words from escaping.

“Like what, Molly?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing. Forget everything I said. Go to Sarah.”

“But what-?”

“ _Go._ ”

The film turned out to be entirely in black and white and focused entirely on two people unable to express their feelings for each other, which led to tragedy. Sarah seemed to like it, sniffling a bit at the sad parts. John hated it, mostly because Sherlock kicked his seat the entire time.

(In fact, the only part of the movie that John enjoyed was when Sarah put her head on his shoulder. This, however, was spoiled five minutes later, when Sherlock (accidentally, he later swore) spilled his popcorn into John’s lap.)

Thankfully, after the film, Molly had the sense to drag Sherlock away, leaving John and Sarah alone for their walk back up to the school.

“Sorry about all that,” he said as they trudged up the path through the meadows. “He…he means well. Honestly.”

“It’s fine, John,” Sarah sighed. “Really.”

He didn’t realize until he had nearly run her over that she had stopped walking. They stood there under the watery light of the late November moon, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

(John knew he should feel excited, exhilarated. Instead, he just felt slightly ill.)

In the end it was Sarah who moved in first. Her lips were soft and dry against his mouth and without even thinking about it, his arms moved to wrap around her waist. The kiss was chaste; it lasted maybe three seconds and then they broke apart, leaving them in the same position as before, standing in the road staring uncomfortably at each other in the darkness.

( _Say something,_ John told himself frantically. _Say anything._ ) His mouth moved soundlessly, trying to shape itself around words.

“Um.”

(The kiss had been nice; there was no denying that. But that’s all it had been, just a warm press of lips against lips that didn’t change his opinions on Sarah any which way or make this situation any less stilted and uncomfortable.)

Sarah pressed her lips together in a tight line.

“That didn’t do anything for you either, did it?”  
(The polite thing, he knew was to lie, to say that the kiss had left him weak in the knees, overcome with passion, however it was that a first kiss was supposed to make you feel. But the truth was that it had just left him feeling very tired.)

(So the truth it would be.)

“No, not really, no.”

“No offense, but I think this was a mistake. But still friends?”

He nodded, feeling slightly relieved.

“None taken. And still friends. Of course still friends.”

And he knew that he should be just a little bit upset at losing Sarah before he really even got the chance to do it properly, but he wasn’t, not really. He just felt a heavy sort of exhaustion and frustration, and an overwhelming desire to go lie down in bed with the covers pulled up all the way.

The lights were off in 221, though there was a small circle of brightness from Sherlock’s desk lamp where he sat reading. When he heard John enter, he muttered, without looking up, “Molly said to apologize for ruining your date.” There was no sincerity in his voice.

“It’s fine,” John said as he got under his blankets fully clothed. All the fight and fire towards Sherlock from earlier that night had gone out. “It would’ve been a bust whether you turned up or not. Just next time don’t drag Molly into it.”

There was silence for a while in the room save for the sound of Sherlock turning pages, and at first, John thought that Sherlock had just ignored him. But there it was, muttered quietly and probably not for John to hear at all.

“Hopefully, there won’t _be_ a next time.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.” A minute later, the desk lamp clicked off and he could hear Sherlock changing into his pyjamas and climbing into his bed.

As John lay in bed, utterly exhausted but unable to sleep, he tried to figure what had gone wrong, tried to figure out what he wanted. He’d had a perfectly nice girl who’d been more than eager to go out with him, and yet he was still unsatisfied.

What, exactly, was he searching for?

(And there was just the faintest stirring in the back of his head, someone who might work for him, someone who he might care for the way he couldn’t for Sarah, a wisp of a thought composed of dark curls and gray eyes, but he squashed that thought down. He couldn’t. That was ridiculous and stupid and sure to be disastrous and- no.)

(No.)


	7. Chapter 7

Winter swept in with a fury all its own. One day, John woke up to find that St. Bart’s was covered with a deep layer of snow. The temperature had dropped to nearly unbearably cold and he was starting to see the practical reasons behind Sherlock’s ridiculous coat.

Life had settled into some strange form of normality. He and Sarah still spoke to each other in French, but there was something tense between them now, and she had stopped teasing him about Sherlock.

John wasn’t sure what quite to make of that.

He and Sherlock had never talked about the disastrous date night again and he was perfectly fine with that. Better never to talk about, never talk about why they did the things that they did and said the things they said.

(Better not to think about the possibility he’d imagined before he’d fallen asleep that night.)

“So what are you doing for the holidays? Knowing you, you’ve probably got some terrifying Holmes Manor stashed away in the countryside with servants and…god, I don’t know, whatever it is that manors have. A moat, I guess. D’you have a moat?”

They were walking back to their room from dinner, shoes crunching through the snow. It was early evening, the sky lit up with a hushed purple sunset, the windows of the building glowing with golden light. Something about the night, something about walking through snow with Sherlock on a snowy evening, filled John with a quiet sense of happiness that seeped through his bones.

Sherlock snorted.

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course I don’t have a _moat_. We do have a dungeon, though.”

John stopped in his tracks, trying to figure out if Sherlock was having him on or not.

“Come off it. A dungeon?”

Now Sherlock was trying to hide his laughter, narrow shoulders shaking. John scowled.

“Really, John, even someone of your intellect should be able to- _oof_!”

The end of whatever Sherlock had to say was cut short by a fistful of snow. He stood there for a moment, frozen fingers held to his newly damp cheek, looking confused.

“For a genius, Holmes, you definitely don’t seem to know much about snowballs,” John said with a grin as he rolled another one between his gloved hands.

“Honestly, John this is childish and ridiculous and _ohmygodIamgoingtokillyou_.” Sherlock’s voice had instantly dropped dangerously low the moment that John had dropped another handful of snow down the back of his shirt, his hands clenching as he braced against the cold, and for a moment they stood still and uncomfortably close on the pathway, eyes locked on each other, and John wasn’t sure whether Sherlock was going to punch him or-

( _Or what?_ )

(John’s face was red from more than just the cold.)

And then suddenly Sherlock was a blur of moment and suddenly there was snow flying from every direction and John was fairly sure that several hit him in the face.

He retaliated in an instant and then they were running across the field, hurling snowballs and insults at each other and laughing.

(And it was glorious. John wanted this feeling for the rest of his life.)

A rather sizable lump of snow hit John square in the back, which was followed by something distinctly more solid than snow and suddenly he was being tackled to the ground, the contents of his backpack spilling out across the frozen ground.

They lay there for a long moment on the ground, limbs tangled together, laughing until they ran out breath, until it was nothing more than silent shakes of their stomachs.

(And John was freezing and soaking wet and his shoulder ached but he hadn’t felt this happy since before the accident and that was all that mattered.)

(And he knew that something about this was a bit too close, too intimate for friends but it was perfect and so he couldn’t be arsed to care.)

But eventually the ground felt hard and his shoulder was twinging and he made a move to get up. Sherlock pressed the leg that was lying on top of John’s down, pinning John to where he was.

“Let me up, you great nutter,” John said, pushing fruitlessly at Sherlock’s gangly frame.

But in typical Sherlock fashion, he refused to move.

“Help, help I’m being oppressed!” he shouted as he attempted to wriggle out from underneath him.

Next to him, Sherlock frowned.

“Don’t exaggerate, John, I’m hardly _oppressing_ you _._ ” Nevertheless, he lifted his legs off of John and unfolded himself off the ground, offering a hand to help him up.

“I know that, idiot. It’s a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” John grumbled as he accepted Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock blinked at him in confusion.

“God, have you really not seen Holy Grail? You’re missing out. We’ll watch it sometime. Now help me pick up my stuff, seeing as you’re the one who knocked me to the ground in the first place.”

Sherlock stooped and began to help John scoop up the scattered notebooks and pens. He picked up a parcel wrapped in shiny green paper, frowning as he read the tag.

“From J to S, Merry Christmas. I’m assuming this isn’t for Sarah?”

John snatched it out of his hands, shoving it quickly into his bag before Sherlock could get a further look.

“Obviously not. Who’s the only person with the initial S who I’d go to the bother of getting a gift for?”

Sherlock blinked for a moment, confused.

“I’m assuming me. Based on the weight of the-”

John stamped on his foot.

“If you try to deduce it, then I can promise you you’re not going to get it. I’ll give it to you the day we leave for break, promise.”

Sherlock nodded, but he looked slightly put out.

“Now I guess I’ve got to find a gift for you.”

“It’s what friends typically do, yeah.”

John waited for some cutting reply, but Sherlock was silent, hands in his pockets, staring at the sunset on the horizon. He pretended not to notice, though, the hint of a smile on his face.

 

“This film is ridiculous, not to mention incredibly historically inaccurate.”

“Oh, would you come off it and just enjoy it? If you don’t stop nitpicking soon, I swear I’ll punch you in the face.”

They were wedged together on John’s bed, Sherlock’s laptop held between them with _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ playing on the screen. They were only forty-five minutes in and Sherlock hadn’t shut up once about how the film wasn’t true to medieval history or Arthurian legend.

“I don’t really think that the Knights Who Say Ni are-”

John clamped his hand over Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock glared at him, and then bit down on his fingers.

(God, some days Sherlock reminded him so strongly of Harry, and not in a good way.)

“Christ, why’d you do that? Now I’ve Sherlock spit all over my hand. Ta, mate, really.”

Sherlock gave a smug smile.

When the film ended, they sat in silence for a minute, staring at the now empty screen. Sometime during the course of the movie they’d both ended up shifting at the same time, and though they’d started out both sitting cross-legged with several inches of space between the two of them, their legs were now pressed up next to each other.

(John tried not to focus on that, tried to avoid thinking about how nice the solid warmth of Sherlock’s leg was.)

(It was tougher than it seemed.)

“It wasn’t _as_ terrible as I thought it would be, given your taste in entertainment.”

“The amount of faith you put in me is really amazing, thank you.”

Sherlock chuckled quietly and he was silent for a moment and then:

“So what are your plans for the holidays? Seems only fair that I feign polite curiosity, seeing as you’re giving me a Christmas gift.”

John rolled his eyes.  
“Don’t do me any favors. But no, I’m going home to London. It’ll be weird, though, you know? First Christmas without…”

“Without your mother.”

“Yeah.”

It was silent again and when Sherlock spoke, his voice was soft, gentle even.

“Will you ever tell me what happened? About the accident?”

John bit his lip, and then forced himself to take a deep breath.

He had always hated talking about that night, being forced to remember the squeal of cars skidding across pavement and the screech of ambulance sirens. Even though he hadn’t had a panic attack in a few weeks, he still felt on the verge of one whenever the subject of the accident came up, and for a moment, he was afraid he was going to have one then and there, with Sherlock watching.

But if there was anyone he could trust with the full story, it was Sherlock. He took another shuddery breath.

“It was- it was this past May. We’d left London for the day, to go visit my aunt, and we were heading home that night. We were maybe about twenty minutes out when I realized that I’d left my phone at my aunt’s house and even though we probably just could’ve had my aunt mail it to us, I kept badgering my parents until they turned around. We were about fifteen minutes away from my aunt’s when there was this car, coming from the wrong direction and swerving all over the road. Obviously drunk, you know? My dad tried to turn out of the way to avoid it but it was too late and-”

“And it hit you head on.” Sherlock’s voice was practically a whisper.

John nodded, avoiding Sherlock’s eyes, staring dead ahead at the wall.

“My dad and Harry just had some cuts and bruises, nothing that bad. But my mum and the drunk driver both. They both. Well. And afterwards, everyone kept telling me it wasn’t my fault, you know? My dad, my aunt, Ella, everyone. But it was. Harry knows it and I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me for it. If I hadn’t made them go back to get my phone, my mom would still be alive today.”

“John, you know it’s not-”

John gave a bitter laugh. “Please don’t.”

(Because it was his fault, wasn’t it? There was no avoiding it.)

Sherlock sat silently, his fingers twisting in his lap. His left hand was squeezing his ankle so tight that the skin stretched over his knuckles had gone bone white.

“Is that how you hurt your shoulder?”

Instead of saying anything in response, John tugged down the back of his shirt to show the mass of knotty tissue that stretched from his collarbone down his back to him. Sherlock stared at it for an uncomfortably long time, lips parted slightly.

“Fucking ugly, isn’t it?”

Sherlock didn’t respond, but for a second, John could’ve sworn that he felt the ghost of fingers resting against it.

(It felt gentle, loving almost, and something in John’s chest hurt with a palpable ache.)

“It’ll be alright.”  
And that was all that needed to be said, all that he needed to hear. Sherlock’s hand came up and gave John’s a quick squeeze and instead of removing himself entirely afterwards, their fingers stayed entangled and John made no move to separate them.

Because he didn’t care if this wasn’t what _justfriends_ did, if this was something too intimate and personal, because it was what he needed.

He needed Sherlock and he needed this.

 

The day before break, Sherlock threw a textbook at the back of John’s head.

“Ow. Thank you for that,” John grumbled as he turned away from packing his trunk to glare at Sherlock. “Really, if you need to get my attention, I have a name, you know.”

Sherlock chose not to acknowledge this.

“Alfred Peck’s wife has announced her plans to pack up the bookstore, sell the building, and move out of town.”

“I don’t blame her, seeing as it’s where her husband died.”

“That’s not the point. The point is that she’s just a little old lady, who’s going to need people to help her move things. People like us. People who also have an interest in finding where Peck might’ve stashed _The Brothers Grimm_.”

“I’m not one of those people.”

“I am, so yes you are.”

“Shut up.”

John had thought that Sherlock’s obsession with the murders had ended, but that didn’t seem to be true. It was both exciting and worrying, the mad look in his eye when he talked about it.

(It was exciting and worrying too, how much John wanted there to be another murder so that he could get that feeling of exhilaration back again.)

“So you want to go there on the pretense of helping her pack up and instead try and figure out where the book might be, keeping in mind that finding the book might lead the murderer to _us_?”

“Exactly.”

John thought about it a moment and sighed.

“Fine.”

 

Mrs. Peck appeared delighted to have two boys to help her lift the (massively heavy and none too easy on John’s shoulder) boxes of books out of the store.

“I’m leaving town after the holidays,” she said as John nearly staggered under the weight of a cardboard box filled with encyclopedias. His shoulder gave a sharp stab and he nearly saw spots, but he bit his lip. “Going to stay up with my sister in Edinburgh.”

“That’s- _oof_ \- nice.” The box nearly slipped out of his fingers. Before he could reclaim his grasp on it, Sherlock swept up from behind him and lifted it out of his grasp, seeming to carry it easily.

(He was the textbook definition of a bastard.)

“Now, Rose- can I call you Rose?” Sherlock was giving Mrs. Peck his charming smile, the one that John hated because it was practically dripping with falsehood. “How was it…after Mr. Peck died?”

“Sherlock,” he hissed, a warning.

Mrs. Peck opened her mouth wide, eyes blinking rapidly.

“Well, obviously after Alfie died, it wasn’t…it wasn’t easy.”

“Did you ever have any suspicions about your husband?”

She frowned.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John whispered again, this time unable to keep the anger from his tone. He never realized when things weren’t okay, when he needed to stop for fear of hurting someone around him.

“That he could be involved in anything illicit? The black market, perhaps?” He dropped the mask of false charm. “Come on, even someone as mindless as you would’ve noticed!”

Mrs. Peck stood staring at him for a moment and then she drew herself up to her full height, spots of red appearing in her cheeks. Her mouth was in a thin, pressed line, but there was the faint hint of tears in her eyes.

“Out!” was all that she could say. John couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

They walked in silence up the path towards the school, Sherlock lost in his own head, John trying to keep his anger under control. They didn’t speak until they were back in 221, but by then, John had reached his boiling point.

“Based on the way she reacted, I’d say that she must know-”

“Why can’t you ever think about how what you say has an effect on people?” John’s voice was too loud to his own ears and his hands were shaking. “Is it that bloody difficult for you?”

Sherlock whirled around, his face curled up in a sneer.

“Please, yes, teach me how to be more like _you_ , more like everyone else, who can’t see a single damned thing that’s going on around them because they’re too focused on feelings and how other people feel. Please teach me, because apparently it’s so obvious that without it, I’ll never be tolerable.”

“Oh don’t start. You with your obsession with never fucking feeling anything or getting close to anyone. Did the thought ever occur to you that there are people who might _want_ to get close to you, who love you? No, of course it didn’t, because you’re Sherlock _bloody_ Holmes and you think you’re better than everyone else! God, I don’t even know why I bother sometimes.”

Sherlock stepped in closer to John until their faces were nearly touching. There was a cold fire in the gray of Sherlock’s eyes and John realized that his hands were shaking. When he spoke, Sherlock’s voice was quiet, nearly a whisper.

“Then _don’t_.”

That was it. John took his Christmas present for Sherlock, which he’d been planning to give to him before they left for break the next day and hurled it in his general direction, not looking back as he went for the door to see if it had hit him.

When he got to the door, he turned around.

“I hope you enjoy being alone. I really hope you do. Because that’s all you’re ever going to get.”

(And if something in him broke at the stricken look on Sherlock’s face as he slammed the door behind him, he did his best to ignore it.)

 


	8. Chapter 8

The holidays, as they usually did, came and went quickly.

The train from London was filled with other St. Bart’s students, and it was only a matter of minutes after stepping onboard that John was itching to get back to school, back to normalcy (back to Sherlock).

As the train pulled out of the station, Harry occupied by the fifth Harry Potter book, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through everything that had been said in the past few weeks, trying to find the exact moment when the balance shifted.

Because something had changed between them since their fight, something important.

He just couldn’t figure out what.

 

_Two Weeks Earlier_

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** An apology

**Date:** 22 December, 9:07 AM

I’m sorry for being right.

Happy now?

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** An (additional) apology

**Date:** 22 December, 9:09 AM

I’m sorry for being right AND being rude about it.

Answer me.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Don’t be childish

**Date:** 22 December, 10:45 AM

John.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Really?

**Date:** 22 December, 11:02 AM

JOHN.

-SH

PS- Don’t you pride yourself on being the more emotionally mature one?

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Because if so you’re wrong

**Date:** 22 December, 11:03 AM

Because the last time I checked, being emotionally mature meant accepting people’s apologies and not ignoring them like a child.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Two can play at this game

**Date:** 22 December, 11:17 AM

Fine.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** I’m giving you the cold shoulder

**Date:** 22 December, 11:18 AM

I’m ignoring you now.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** This is getting ridiculous

**Date:** 22 December, 12:08 PM

John.

JOHN.

If you don’t respond soon, I’ll assume that you’re dead and I’ll have to notify the proper authorities and you wouldn’t want that, would you?

Please answer back.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 22 December, 12:08 PM

Please.

-S

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 22 December, 12:11 PM

So it’s obvious that you’re ignoring me, which is fine of course, because I don’t need you, not even a little bit, but I’m sorry. All right?

-S

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 22 December, 12:11 PM

And I shouldn’t have…done that and I’m sorry and god John, you’ve got to forgive me because I don’t know what I would do without you and that scares me because if there’s one thing I hate it’s not knowing.

And you’re my only friend, you’ve got to know that, and even though I say I don’t need friends, I’m lying a little bit, because I need you.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

 I’m sorry.

I think I’m just going to delete this email.

-S

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** IGNORE THE PREVIOUS EMAILS

**Date:** 22 December, 12:11 PM

I’m fairly sure they may have been infected with a virus of some sort. It was never my intention to send them. My advice is to delete them without reading them.

-SH

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** SERIOUSLY DO NOT OPEN THEM

**Date:** 22 December, 12:12 PM

I’M WARNING YOU, JOHN WATSON.

-SH

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** relax, you idiot

**Date:** 22 December, 12:35 PM

I didn’t answer your emails because I was on the bloody train, idiot. And I tried to talk to you this morning before I left but you were asleep for once.

-John

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** sorry

**Date:** 22 December, 12:37 PM

And honestly, I should be the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have said those things about you being alone and all that, Sherlock. It’s not true. You know it’s not. It was pretty shitty of me to say it was.

I’m sorry. I really am.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** You’re an idiot

**Date:** 22 December, 12:38 PM

Of course I accept your apology.

Also being on a train isn’t an adequate excuse for not reading your emails. THAT’S WHAT YOUR PHONE IS FOR.

And my Christmas gift was perfect. I’ve already started reading the cold case book, and I appreciated the fairy tales, as ridiculous a gift that may have been. Yours should arrive at your flat sometime over the holidays.

 And thank you.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** and you’re a bastard

**Date:** 22 December, 12:40 PM

That wasn’t meant to be opened until Christmas, wanker.

-John

PS- If my gift is a body part of any sort, I will be REALLY DISPLEASED WITH YOU.

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** You never said I had to wait till Christmas

**Date:** 22 December, 12:43 PM

The amount of faith you have in me is staggering sometimes.

-S

PS- But really, it’s not body parts.

 

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** You need to check your email more often

**Date:** 23 December, 9:03 AM

How’s London? I’m guessing hideously dull, seeing as I’m not there.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** not everything in my life revolves around you

**Date:** 23 December, 9:07 AM

Fine, actually. Nice. My dad seems…happier? It’s weird because we’d thought he’d be upset, what with this being the first Christmas without Mum, but he’s doing better.

(Harry thinks he’s met someone, which as much as I want him to be happy, I really hope isn’t the case.)

You?

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Yes it does

**Date:** 23 December, 9:12 AM

Fine up until this morning when Mycroft arrived. Now it’s hellish. Can think of a million places I’d rather be.

And Mycroft just asked how my better half, meaning you was. His implications were ridiculous.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** no, it really doesn’t

**Date:** 23 December, 9:15 AM

Completely ridiculous.

(Though I am, in fact, the better half.)

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Mycroft, I swear to god if you don’t stop attempting to read over my shoulder

**Date:** 23 December, 9:20 AM

No, you’re not.

Obviously if we were in a relationship, I’d be the better half.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** mycroft don’t read this

**Date:** 23 December, 9:21 AM

Whatever you say, mate.

-John

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** christmas!

**Date:** 25 December, 10:54 AM

Merry Christmas, you lunatic.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** it’s too early for this

**Date:** 25 December, 11:01 AM

Was the exclamation point really necessary?

-S

-PS: I trust my gift arrived? Were they suitable?

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** You don’t need to pretend you like them if you don’t

**Date:** 25 December, 11:02 AM

I can always exchange them for something you actually like if you don’t want them. It’s fine. I’d understand.

-S

 

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 25 December, 11:05 AM

Yes and yes.

No need to worry, you idiot. They’re fine. They’re great. You’re great.

But really, Sherlock, thank you. I know everyone else thinks that medical journals are incredibly boring, but they aren’t to me, so thank you. It was surprisingly thoughtful of you and I really appreciate it.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 25 December, 11:09 AM

Good.

And what do you mean _surprisingly_ thoughtful? I’m incredibly thoughtful.

-S

PS- Medical journals are interesting to me because they are interesting to you.

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 25 December, 11:11 AM

You know what I mean. You’re normally so wrapped up in mysteries and experiments and just being Sherlock that I’m surprised that you went to the trouble of figuring out a gift for someone. It doesn’t seem like something you’d do for people.

-John

PS- That’s a strange way of looking at it.

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 25 December, 11:13 AM

It isn’t something I’d do for people.

It’s something I’d do for you.

-S

PS- And it isn’t, really. Because you interest me.

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** LOOK AT THIS

**Date:** 27 December, 2:47 AM

John.

JOHN.

Look at this article from yesterday:

_…A fire broke out in an East London flat early Christmas morning, killing Alexei and Sofia Molinov, the brother and sister who lived there. Mr. and Ms. Molinov_ …

Do you realize what this means??

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** i’m going to kill you one day, i swear

**Date:** 27 December, 3:04 AM

I realize that it’s 3 in the bloody morning.

And no, I don’t see how this is important at all.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Stop complaining

**Date:** 27 December, 3:10 AM

I wouldn’t have even realized that it was important if I hadn’t taken a peek into some of Mycroft’s files the last time I was home. That’s why the names Alexei and Sofia Molinov stuck out to me. They’re aliases, John. I saw it in Mycroft’s papers. Alexei and Sofia Molinov are actually Grigori and Anya Vasilev and they’re wanted in Russia, Germany, Austria and France.

Can you guess why?

(Hint: they’re art thieves.)

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** oh my god

**Date:** 27 December, 3:13 AM

So they’re the ones who stole the book?? And whoever’s been killing all these people is using them as another warning to whoever’s got the book now?

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Yes, exactly

**Date:** 27 December, 3:15 AM

Yes and yes. I used Mycroft’s ID to get the police report from the fire. Just like with Tabitha Brooks’ murder, there was the page from Brothers Grimm and all the references to a fairy tale. This time, it was breadcrumbs scattered on the stairs leading up to their flat and of course the method of murder and its victims.

-S

 

**From:** jwat@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** that’s actually really twisted and awful

**Date:** 27 December, 3:21 AM

Hansel and Gretel, right? I mean the breadcrumbs, the brother and sister, the oven/fire bit? Eurgh. That’s really horrific, to be honest.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** But rather brilliant

**Date:** 27 December, 3:27 AM

Horrific but clever, I suppose.

Besides, this means that the murderer’s back! It’s like having Christmas all over again.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** oh god i’m too tired for this

**Date:** 27 December, 3:30 AM

Talk about a bit not good. I’m going to bed. Try not to write the murderer any love letters or what have you before the end of holidays.

-John

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** auld lang syne

**Date:** 1 January, 12:00 AM

Happy New Year!!

Your resolution should be to stop accidentally on purpose setting my jumpers on fire.

-John

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Happy pointless celebration of the turning of time

**Date:** 1 January, 12:01 AM

Your resolution should be to stop wearing such ugly jumpers.

-S

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** fuck off

**Date:** 1 January, 12:03 AM

Well, your resolution should be to stop being such a prat all the time.

-John

PS- Though, even though I hate admitting it, I did actually miss you over the holidays, you bastard.

 

**From:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** Is it really necessary to be so vulgar?

**Date:** 1 January, 12:04 AM

Your resolution should be to start thinking of better comebacks.

-S

PS- I missed you too.

 

**From:** jwatson@stbarts.co.uk

**To:** sholmes@stbarts.co.uk

**Subject:** [None]

**Date:** 1 January, 12:05 AM

Sherlock, what’s going on here? Between us?

-John

 

[Message not sent.]

[Message deleted.]

 

_Two Weeks Later_

It was strange, really, how much St. Bart’s felt more like home now than London did.

(Well, not St. Bart’s, if John was being honest with himself. 221 felt like home. Sherlock felt like home.)

But there was a strange uneasiness settled deep in his chest, the feeling that something had changed within him that he couldn’t quite figure out.

( _It was a good idea not to send that email_ , he told himself. _After all, there’s nothing going on between us._ )

(Right?)

(Of course not.)

“John!”

Molly was striding across the path towards him, feet slipping in the snow, accidentally bumping into several people on her way there. Her cheeks were bright red from the cold.

“Hi, Molly. How were your holidays?”

She was about to answer when someone from behind her called her name. A small boy with dark hair peeled away from the crowds and came to stand next to her, entwining his hand in hers. She flushed an even deeper red.

“Oh, this is John Watson. John, this is my boyfriend-”

But the boy cut her off, sticking out his hand for John to shake. He gave a small, curving grin.

“It’s nice to finally meet you. Molly’s told me loads about you. I’m Jim. Jim Moriarty.”


	9. Chapter 9

There was something about seeing the cheerful familiarity of 221 again that lightened some weight in John’s chest that he hadn’t even known had been lodged there. Allowing himself a quick smile, he opened the door.

Sherlock was already inside, his lean form bent over his trunk as he unpacked. The books that John had gotten him for Christmas had been placed with great care on his shelf.

John leaned against the doorframe, not moving any further into the room, not saying anything, just quietly observing Sherlock. There was something enthralling about the graceful yet slightly spastic way that he moved and John hadn’t realized before how it was even possible to wholly miss any one person so much.

The relief of being back, of being with him was a bright warm thing in John’s chest. He had missed this, the quiet, golden happiness of 221, the way that Sherlock looked when he was totally focused on something, Sherlock himself.

(God, he had missed Sherlock.)

He let out a quiet, huffed chuckle and Sherlock turned to face him.

“Hello, John.” His voice was careful, cautious, steady.

John nodded, smiled, suddenly aware of both the lump in his throat and the crackling heaviness in the air between them. Neither he nor Sherlock had the gall to look directly at each other, but he could feel Sherlock’s eyes upon him.

They moved towards each other, until they were close enough for it to be a question ( _What are we doing here? Is this it?_ ) and every part of John hurt, even his teeth, but it was a good kind of hurt. Sherlock’s face up close was pale and strangely fragile and John realized he was shaking.

But something broke the spell between them- Sherlock sneezed as John accidentally stamped on his foot and they sprung apart.

They went safely to their opposite sides of the room. The thrumming atmosphere was still there, electric underneath the uncomfortable tension, making John feel incredibly aware of himself and his body.

(What the _hell_ had all that been about?)

“So,” he said, his face flushed. “How were your holidays, then?”

“Good,” Sherlock replied absentmindedly. “No actually, they were awful. Glad to be back.

“Same.”

“By the way,” Sherlock said as he continued unpacking. This was here when I got into the room.” He held up a creamy white envelope with their names written on the front in small, neat writing. “It’s from Mrs. Peck. She wants to thank us for helping her move by inviting us over for tea on Friday.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“Surprised she wants you to come back after the things you said to her.”

The words were out before he even properly thought about them, and he felt a sinking in his chest as something in Sherlock’s face closed down.

“Sherlock, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

He waved him off with a hand.

“It’s fine. But about that.”

“Yeah, about that.”

“I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“True, but I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that either.”

“Can we just…can we just agree to never do that again? Not bicker, obviously, because that’s inevitable but not to simply leave it to fester for days on end? No more storming out.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper and it trembled while he spoke.

“Of course. God, of course. Never, Sherlock, never.”

And John wasn’t quite sure who had initiated it, but suddenly their arms were wrapped around each other. Sherlock’s head was resting carefully atop John’s, his face buried in his hair. John’s fingers brushed lightly against the back of Sherlock’s neck, careful, gentle.

“Never again. I promise,” he whispered where his face was pressed up against the bare intersection of Sherlock’s shoulder and neck. “Never again.”

 

In Biology, Molly was all too happy to have a captive audience to whom she could gush about Jim to.

From what John was able to catch, he’d transferred to Bart’s sometime in November, but hadn’t asked Molly out until the week before Christmas break. Their first date had been at Molly’s house, watching Glee while her cat sat between them, and John gave a silent thanks that there was an even worst first date than his own.

“…And he’s so kind and he listens to everything I say and tells me that I’m beautiful and…”

(John was happy for Molly. Honestly, he was. Which was why he was keeping his mouth shut about what Sherlock had deduced about Jim being gay after seeing him hanging awkwardly around their door that morning.)

Molly’s face had gone a slight pink and she was waving her pen around with dangerous enthusiasm as she spoke.

“But enough about me. How were your holidays?”

“They were good. Fine. Dull.”

Molly nodded, tapping her pen thoughtfully against the table.

“And how’s Sherlock?”

(John really didn’t like the way she smiled a bit when she said that, as if she knew something that he didn’t.)

“He’s…fine? Not really my business, is it? We’re just roommates, that’s all.”

“Of course.”

But the faint smile was still there and it made him itch with curiosity, with the need to know what Molly was dancing around.

And suddenly it fell into place; she thought they were together. Oh god. His face burned and he tried to avoid her eyes.

“Molly, you know that I’m not…you know, gay.”

She laughed, knocking her pen so hard against the desk that the cap went flying across their classroom.

“I never said you were. But it’s just him, isn’t it? With you? I’ve seen the way you look at him. It’s like you’re coming alive or something.”

John suddenly felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the room and he struggled to find something to say in response.

“I’m not- we’re not. No. He’s not even inter- no. Christ no.”

He grabbed his backpack before Molly could ask any more questions and slipped out of the room. In the bathroom, he washed his hands three times in a row and then looked at himself in the mirror.

Same sandy hair that never lay quite right, same blue eyes, same ears that stuck out too far. He was exactly the same as he’d been back in September. So why did it feel like he had changed so dramatically?

There was nothing going on between him and Sherlock. He knew that and Sherlock knew that and Molly had to know that. There couldn’t be. John was straight and Sherlock was…well, Sherlock was whatever Sherlock was but it was certainly not interested in John. To be honest, John wasn’t even sure if Sherlock cared about these sorts of things, if he at all noticed the way your mouth went dry and your stomach hurt in the best sort of way whenever you saw a particular person.

(And John’s particular person _was not_ Sherlock. He told himself this over and over as he watched himself in the mirror.)

Besides, even if Sherlock did notice these sorts of things, why the hell would someone like him be interested in someone like John? John was ordinary, worse than ordinary- he was broken and scarred, someone who needed a therapist and whose shoulder was gnarled mess of old wounds. Sherlock was a force of nature, someone that took up all the space in the room, someone whole and brilliant and glorious.

He could have anyone he wanted, so why on earth would he choose John?

 

The Pecks’ house was small and cozy, with overstuffed armchairs and several incredibly fat cats curled up in sunny corners of their sitting room. John and Sherlock were wedged tight together on a plush green sofa staring uncomfortably at a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Peck and a young woman, their daughter most likely, during happier times as they waited for Mrs. Peck to return with their tea.

“This was a mistake,” John hissed. “Complete waste of our time.”

Sherlock laughed quietly, but said nothing in response.

Mrs. Peck emerged from the kitchen a moment later, bearing a tray with three mugs. One was already partially drunk from, the others filled practically to the brim. She handed the full ones to the boys.

“It was so very kind of you boys to come and help me pack up before I left town,” she said as she settled into her armchair. One of the cats jumped up into her lap with a purr and she smiled down at it over the rim of her mug. “It’ll be nice to get away from all the memories of my poor Alfie.”

John looked at Sherlock to respond, but he was too busy carefully swirling sugar into his tea, so John nodded, giving a weak smile.

“Are you two from around here?” she asked, stroking the cat. There was a loud clatter as Sherlock dropped his spoon against the tray.

“London, in fact,” John said. “About forty minutes away.”

“It’s a pity that you’ve got no family or anything in the area, then,” she said softly. “Drink your tea before it gets cold, dear.”

John raised the mug to his lips, but before he could take a sip, Sherlock stepped hard on his foot. He bit down around a curse. When he shot him a questioning glare, Sherlock stared at his mug, and then at John, his lips pressed in a tight line. The message was clear: _do not drink_. John put his mug back down, resting it carefully on the table as if he was dealing with a live bomb.

From the kitchen came the bright _ding_ of the oven, and Mrs. Peck lifted the cat off her lap to scurry into the other room.

“That’s just the biscuits! I’ll be out in a minute! Enjoy your tea!”

“We are!” Sherlock shouted as he took his and John’s mugs and dumped them into a potted plant.

“What the _hell_ are you on about?” John whispered.

Sherlock held his now empty mug underneath John’s nose. There was the scent of tea, but there was something else underneath it, something dark and bitter.

“Poison,” he said, leaning in close so that his lips nearly brushed the shell of John’s ear. “That’s why she kept telling us to drink up.”

John tried very hard to focus on the fact that they had just nearly been murdered instead of the close proximity of Sherlock’s lips to his face.

(It wasn’t particularly successful.)

“I suggest we leave now.”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had in ages.”

They grabbed their coats off the rack and slipped out the door, careful to make as little noise as possible to avoid alerting Mrs. Peck to their escape.

They made it all the way back to school before either of them said anything.

“Did that really just happen?” John asked, sticking his hands in his pockets to guard them from the cold. “Did we really nearly just get murdered by a bloody _retiree_?”

Sherlock nodded.

“God, can you imagine how undignified of a death that would’ve been? Surrounded by doilies and cats?”

“Downright embarrassing, it would’ve been.”

They were silent for a moment, and then they both caught each other’s eye and erupted into laughs, long, infectious laughs that made their stomachs ache and their eyes water, until John’s knees buckled and he nearly fell, sending them into a fit of laughter all over again.

John wiped the tears from his eyes as the last of his chuckles subsided. Sherlock was still at it, his shoulders shaking, his low, rumbling laugh making his eyes crinkle up around the corners.

And suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped on in a dark room, John knew.

He was in love with him.

He was head over heels in love with his best friend, his mad, brilliant, hilarious, (slightly hideously gorgeous) best friend who almost definitely did not feel the same.

And he could never tell him.

(It might’ve been sad if it also hadn’t been so bloody hilarious.)

And John also knew that this wasn’t some new change. He didn’t know when he had fallen in love with Sherlock or why it had taken him so long to realize it. Maybe it had been when he had read the email where Sherlock had apologized, where he had bared his soul. Maybe it had been after their fight, when John’s last view of him before storming out was the broken look on his face and he had realized how badly he screwed up, how close he was to losing something incredibly important, and how he needed to go back in there to make things right but couldn’t, because of his pride.

Maybe it had been the very first night, when Sherlock had made John laugh the way he had just now, and John had slept without nightmares for the first time in ages.

He felt sure about Sherlock in a way that he had never felt about Sarah. Sherlock knew about the car accident. Sherlock had asked to see his scar. Sherlock had seen John at both his very best and his very worst and he trusted him and he protected him and for that John loved him.

Oh god. He loved him. John loved him and there was no turning back because this was terrifyingly real and loving someone like Sherlock Holmes wasn’t something that you could easily erase or forget about.

He suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable and he reached in his pockets for his phone to have something to do with his hands before realizing it wasn’t there.

Shit. _Shit_. He must’ve left it at Mrs. Peck’s.

“Sherlock,” he said, already stopped in his tracks. (And did his voice betray him? Could Sherlock tell when he spoke that John loved him?) “I’ve got to go back there. I left my phone behind.”

Sherlock scowled.

“Really, John? Fine. I’ll come with you.”

But John held up a hand to stop him.

“It’s fine. We’ll attract more attention if we go together. I’ll just sneak back in, grab it and run back up here. It’ll be fine.”

(Besides, he needed a minute away from Sherlock to process the fact that he’d just gone from John Watson to John Watson Who Loves Sherlock Holmes. It was a lot to take in at once.)

Sherlock frowned.

“Fine. Just…be careful?”

John grinned.

“Of course.”

 

When John came to, his head throbbing and his vision fuzzy, he was in a dimly lit basement, his clothes caked with mud, his backpack in the corner of the room. Boxes and trunks were stacked in teetering piles throughout.

He sat on the dirt floor for a minute, his head in his hands, trying to remember what had happened for him to end up here.

When he’d gotten back into town, he’d very carefully opened the Pecks’ front door, moving it slowly to keep it from creaking. His mobile phone was sitting where he’d left it on the table, their mugs still left out from tea. There was no sign of Mrs. Peck.

John had grabbed his phone quickly and was on his way out when suddenly there was a soft cough from behind him. He turned and found himself staring down the black, snub-nosed barrel of a gun.

“I’m glad you came back,” said Mrs. Peck, keeping the gun trained on John. “It would’ve been much better if your boyfriend had come along too, but I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later.”

(There was a cold stab of fear in John’s stomach, both from the gun pointed at his head and at the realization that Sherlock would come looking for him and that he was leading him straight into a trap. Images of Sherlock, bent and bloody and broken, came unwillingly into his head and he felt sick.)

(It was all his fault. Just like the accident, this was all his fault.)

“You’re the one who killed those people then? It was you?” His voice shook slightly but it was clear.

Mrs. Peck laughed, a giggling sound that didn’t seem like it should belong to a would-be murderer.

“Wasn’t me, though whoever it was, I’d like to give them a hand. No, I didn’t kill them. But I might kill you. And in advance, I’m very sorry about this, dear.”

Her hand moved quickly and John braced himself for the iron burn of a bullet breaking into him, but instead there was only the sharp sting of a needle and then everything around him went black, black, black.

Which brought him here, to the basement of the Pecks’ home with no idea as to what his fate would be and no visible ways to escape.

He realized that he was mouthing a silent prayer, a _please god not him not Sherlock god no_. Because if Sherlock came here to rescue him and got himself killed in the process, he’d never be able to forgive himself. Better that he be the one to die.

John realized then that his hands were shaking and he crossed the room to his backpack on quivering legs to find something to occupy himself with, to hold back the panicky waves of fear that threatened to overcome him at any given moment.

Mrs. Peck had taken his phone and his iPod, but all of his school supplies remained neatly lined up inside, and he gave a humorless laugh at the absurdity of it, of seeing his French notebook while he was facing imminent death.

He grabbed a pen from his bag and a half empty notebook and sat cross-legged underneath the light of the bare bulb. He stared at the blank page, trying to think of something _, anything_ to keep his mind off of his situation.

And suddenly, he knew what he had to write.

_Dear Sherlock,_

_If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead, because I’d never let you see this while I’m alive. In fact the only reason why I’m writing this stupid letter at all is because I’m probably going to die soon and there’s some things that you really need to know._

_(Though if I am, in fact, alive through some strange miracle, put this down immediately and forget you’ve ever seen it.)_

_You’ve got to know, about how I feel when it comes to you. I mean, I didn’t know until about an hour ago, but that’s not the way you see things, is it? You’ve probably known for months._

_By the way, don’t feel guilty about it. I understand that you’re not interested. Please don’t beat yourself up over it or anything._

_So yes, Sherlock Holmes, I’m in love with you. Madly, insanely desperately so, I’m afraid, against any sort of rationality or common sense. I think you’re clever and funny and kind, even though you’ll always try to deny that, and mad and beautiful and fantastic and oh god this letter is going to be so embarrassing but I don’t care because everyone gets last words and these are mine._

_Being in love with, even though I’ve only really known about it for all of an hour, is bloody terrifying. You’d know though, wouldn’t you, you narcissistic bastard? But joking aside, it’s terrifying because it’s real in a way that’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and because it feels permanent, lifelong, and because I know I’d do anything, literally anything for you._

_And that’s scary, Sherlock. It really is._

_But it isn’t enough to drive me away from you, because I really do love you and the fact that I didn’t figure this out until my very last day is more than a little bit upsetting._

_If I had the chance, Sherlock, I would’ve spent the rest of my life with you. Imagine how that would’ve been. We could’ve bickered and laughed together for a good sixty or seventy years. I would’ve loved that._

_I also would’ve loved to have the chance to kiss you. Before I met you, I didn’t even think I was anything but straight. And now I don’t know what I am. I’m interested in you and that’s good enough for me. (By the way, please tell Molly she was right about me. She saw through me from the start.)_

_I still would’ve liked the chance to kiss you though. You’re beautiful, you really are, all that pale skin and dark hair and rapid-fire intelligence. You’re a miracle._

_(God, I sound like a sop.)_

_I can’t even remember what I was like before you, because you brought color and life back into my world. You made me important to myself again. You saved me, you know that? When I first met you, I was barely clinging on and you pulled me back from the brink, and I owe you so much for that, so fucking much._

_Oh god. There’s footsteps coming down the stairs. Oh god oh god oh god I don’t want to die. Please god let me live._

_I love you I love you I love you._

_-John_

John tore the pages out of the notebook and shoved them into his pocket. He listened to the footsteps on the stairs grow closer and closer.

He was waiting for either death or salvation.

He just wasn’t sure which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi wow so I just wanted to give a massive massive thanks for all the comments/kudos/everything! It really really means a lot and makes writing this even more fantastic and fun than it already is!


	10. Chapter 10

The footsteps on the stirs grew closer. John knew that he should be frightened, but instead he found himself washed over with a detached sort of calm. Still, he found himself shutting his eyes, waiting for the iron bite of a bullet as whoever it was entered the room.

“John? John!”

It was Sherlock, gray eyes wild and filled with worry. His face was ashen and he was biting down on his lip hard enough to break skin, hard enough that a bright bead of blood had welled up.

John’s legs went rubbery with relief and he let out a long shaky breath.

( _I’m not going to die_ , he told himself. No matter how much he thought it about it, it never grew any less wondrous.)

Sherlock grabbed John by the wrists and dragged him up to a standing position. And then he was on him, taking John’s face in his hands and twisting it this way and that, running his fingers along his hairline, slipping them under John’s sleeve to check his pulse.

“Idiot. _Idiot_ ,” he muttered between clenched teeth as he continued his hurried examination. “Not you. Should’ve never let you go alone. Could’ve been so much worse.”

John had been standing still and silent through all of this, but all the feelings from before suddenly rushed forward and the feeling of Sherlock’s hands on his skin was too much, too much. He batted his hands away.

“I’m fine, you bastard. Just a few bruises. Stop worrying.”

But Sherlock’s face, though he tried to hide it under his usual impassive mask, was twisted up with concern and something in John’s chest ached.

“Come on,” Sherlock said, tugging impatiently at John’s hand. “I don’t know how much time we have.”

They made their way carefully out of the basement through a cellar door that opened up into the bracing winter air. They cut through the Pecks’ back garden and out into the street.

Sherlock shoved his hands into his pockets and turned to face John, walking backwards on the sidewalk.

“Tell me what happened. From the start.”

“I got into the house, grabbed my phone and was almost out the door when she pulled a gun on me. She didn’t tell me much, but she did say that she wasn’t the one who committed the murders, though she could’ve been lying I guess. Then she stabbed me with a hypodermic and next thing I knew, I was in the basement. Oh, and –”

“She didn’t commit the murders, but she’s definitely the one who has the book.”

“Yes, I-”

“Her motivations are obvious. When I came in, she was asleep, so I had the chance to examine her. Her wedding ring is cheap, but her necklace is expensive and predates her marriage by at least a decade. Came from money, obviously, hated the life of a middle class shopkeeper’s wife. When she found out that Tabitha Brooks was selling the book, she saw her chance to start over, to have enough to not have to bother with the shop anymore.”

“Sherlock, if you’d just let me-”

“But Alfred Peck was a good man, someone whose conscience wouldn’t let him purchase a stolen historical treasure. So she bought it, probably with her last bit of her inheritance, and whoever wants it back obviously only knew the last name Peck and didn’t realize that the wife was the culprit and not the husband. So obviously she has the book now and the question remains of where she’s stored it and who hired her to kill us?”

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock blinked, looking as if he was noticing John’s presence for the first time.

“What?”

“I don’t know why she tried to kill us, but I do know where the book is.”

“What?”  
“I said-”

“My hearing is perfectly fine. I’m just wondering at how you’re so sure that you’re able to locate the book when a superior mind couldn’t.”

John resisted the urge to flip Sherlock a rude gesture. ( _This is the bastard you’re in love with_ , he reminded himself.)

“I’m positive I know where it is.”

“Entirely?”

“Entirely.”

“ _How_?”

John allowed himself a quick, triumphant smile.

“Because,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket. “I’ve got it right here.”

It was surprisingly small for being the cause of so much chaos and was resolutely unspectacular. It was bound in battered red leather, its pages yellowed with age. Sherlock rested his fingers carefully on the cover, measured breaths coming out in clouds of white.

“But where?”

“There was a safe in the basement, where she must’ve kept the gun, because it was still open when I came to. I grabbed it after I wrote-”

He cut himself off before he revealed too much. He wasn’t ready for Sherlock to know about how he felt, not yet. This was the best friendship that he’d ever had and he wasn’t going to allow a stupid crush to fuck it all up.

Sherlock gave him a searching look, but pressed no further. He was looking at John as though he was a puzzle to be solved, a body in a locked room to be examined. As if John was the most fascinating thing in the world, as if he was precious. John flushed a bit, shivering in the bitter January cold, and waited for him to say something. Sherlock remained quiet, but he took his scarf off and carefully looped it around John’s neck, fingers brushing gently, deliberately against his exposed skin as he did.

(And John wanted this. He wanted this, wanted Sherlock with everything he had and he couldn’t believe that he had never realized it before today, couldn’t believe that he’d fallen head over heels for someone who’d never feel the same. He loved him, he loved him, he loved him and god it _hurt_.)

“You realize that now that we have the book, we’ll be in danger. It hasn’t exactly been a good luck charm for its previous owners.” Sherlock’s voice was soft and his fingers still rested on the hollow between John’s neck and shoulder that wasn’t covered by his coat. They traced gentle, idle patterns and the feeling of it was a long, slow burn low in John’s stomach. “Whoever Mrs. Peck is dealing with obviously has us on their radar, and I don’t think that’s a particularly positive thing.”

“I know. But there’s no point in being cowards about it. We’ll just be on our guard. Try our best not to get murdered.”

Sherlock’s eyes crinkled up as he smiled and he gave John’s shoulder a quick squeeze.

“John Watson, you are a marvel.”

 

When they got back to school, the campus was practically empty, everything hushed and covered with new fallen snow.

On the benches outside of their building, two figures were bent together in low conversation, but they looked up as John and Sherlock walked by.

It was Jim, small and dark haired and dark eyed, and another boy, tall and wiry and blond, wearing a coat that was too thin for the weather, though it didn’t seem to bother him much. He had a fading bruise around his left eye, his narrow face all harsh, cruel angles.

Jim’s eyes rested on Sherlock’s scarf wrapped carefully around John’s neck, and for a fleeting moment, his face contorted into something almost reptilian, but it was gone in an instant. He raised a hand in greeting and then went back to conversation with the blond boy, who was flicking the bright ashes of his cigarette onto the ground.

“D’you know who that other kid is?” John asked a few minutes later as Sherlock opened the door to their room.

“Haven’t the faintest.”

There was a chirping from Sherlock’s coat pocket and he pulled out his mobile, frowning at the screen.

“Ugh, Mycroft. He probably managed to find out about this afternoon already. I’ll be a minute.” He stepped outside and shut the door behind him, but not before John heard him answer the phone with a grumbled, “Piss off.”

He smiled to himself affectionately, tugging off Sherlock’s scarf and laying it down carefully on his desk. He could still almost feel the ghost of Sherlock’s fingers on his neck and with a sudden, guilty jolt, he remembered the letter.

 _Shit. The letter_. He couldn’t just leave it anywhere in the room; Sherlock knew that John wasn’t telling him the full story and he’d be desperate to ferret out any evidence towards the truth. He didn’t have the heart to destroy it either; it felt wrong somehow, as if he would be erasing his feelings for him. It would have to be sneaky, somewhere Sherlock would never think to look. But where?

John’s eyes fell upon his art history textbook. Even though Sherlock had gotten better about actually going to his classes, his art history attendance was sporadic at best, and he still dismissed the class as trivial and pointless. Perfect.

John tucked the letter in between the pages of the book, trying to convince himself that he was making the right decision. But it was better to keep it secret, to pine away in silence, rather than risk losing Sherlock.

Because nothing was worth losing Sherlock. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about how short it is, but I'll be updating soon!


	11. Chapter 11

John’s worries about the letter seemed to prove unfounded. The weather got colder, the snow banks higher, until suddenly they found themselves in a premature late February thaw that left everything gray and slushy. The letter stayed tucked inside of his book, still unopened and he tried his best to keep his feelings for Sherlock from spilling out.

It was late one Friday afternoon and they were cooped up in their room as the wind outside howled, John packing a duffel bag for London that weekend, Sherlock carving notches into the wall with his penknife.

“You know that one of us is going to have to pay for all your damages to the room, right?” John asked idly, not really expecting much of a response.

Sherlock grunted and drove the knife into his bedpost where it lodged with a solid sounding _thunk_.

“Bored. Why do you feel the need to leave this weekend? You hate going to London and you always sleep much worse for days after you return.”

John smiled to himself at Sherlock’s observation.

“Because me and Harry are all my dad’s got now that…yeah. You know, if my absence bothers you so bloody much, you could always just tag along this weekend.”

Sherlock sat up so quickly that he knocked his head hard against the wall.

“Really?”

 

“Yes, really. You just have to promise me that you’ll keep any deductions about my family to yourself. God knows that I’ve been telling Dad about you nons- _Eurgh_ , Sherlock, Christ, look at what you’ve done to your hand.”

In Sherlock’s scramble to sit up, he’d closed his left hand around the knife embedded in the bedpost. There was now a long, angry slash of red down his palm, from which rivulets of blood ran downwards to his wrist. He blinked down at it, as if surprised by the pain.

“Jesus Christ. Just- just put your hand in your lap and don’t pick at it. I’ll grab the first aid kit.”

Sherlock obeyed and John crossed the room to get the first aid kid from his dresser and then made his way back towards his friend’s bed. He sat cross-legged facing Sherlock and carefully pulled his hand, palm-up, to rest cradled between his thigh and his left hand. He dabbed the blood away carefully with a tissue.

Sherlock hissed at the fizz of hydrogen peroxide and John set his mouth in a firm line.

“This is why we don’t keep knives in the room.”

“Yes, thank you Mother.” Sherlock’s words were a petulant grumble, but his eyes were affectionate.

When he was done cleaning the wound, John took Sherlock’s hand and lifted it up to bandage it. Sherlock had gone very quiet and very still, biting at his lower lip as he watched, pale face slightly flushed. Incredibly aware of how strangely soft Sherlock’s skin was, John tried to be as gentle as possible.

“Thank you,” Sherlock whispered when John was done. “You’ll make a good doctor someday.”

“How’d you know that-”

“Please,” he said with a warm smile. His voice had a familiar tone to it, a _you’re an idiot and this is all obvious, but it’s alright because it’s you_ that John had heard many times before. “You’re caring and patient, but you’re also clever and quick thinking, with steady hands and sharp eyes. You were born to be a doctor, John.”

John bit his lip and looked pointedly at the ceiling, afraid that if he looked directly at Sherlock, his eyes would immediately betray how much he loved him.

(Sometimes, it amazed John that Sherlock didn’t think he could care for others.)

It was then that he realized that he was still holding Sherlock’s hand and that he wasn’t quite ready to let go. Instead, he laced their fingers together, rubbing his thumb in slow, careful circles over the bones of Sherlock’s wrist.

Somehow, they were leaning in towards each other, Sherlock’s head angling downwards, his eyes drifting shut. John’s breath hitched in his throat.

“Sherlock,” he murmured, his voice the faintest of whispers. “What are we doing here? What is this?”

Sherlock blinked, pulled away. He was silent for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, not looking at John. “I don’t know.”

 

When Harry met Sherlock, she gazed up at him with a hard, searching stare and finally said, “Are you John’s boyfriend?”

John’s face went brick red and he began to splutter.

“No, just his friend,” said Sherlock with a flash of a smile. “But I can tell you that you’ve had eggs for breakfast but didn’t like them, that you’ve had a growth spurt in the past year and that you fancy the girl who sits next to

you in Art. She fancies you back, by the way.” Sherlock then swept of towards the train in a swirl of dark coat, leaving Harry goggling at him in his wake.

“He’s _much_ cooler than you, Johnny,” she said in an awed whisper.

“Oh shut up, Harriet.”

“I like him. A lot.” Harry, for the first time in ages, had entwined her hand with John’s and he gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I like him a lot too.” When Harry looked up at him, expecting him to say more, he quickly changed the subject. “So, do you want to tell me about this girl from art class?”

“Her name’s Clara. And do _you_ want to tell me about Sherlock?”

“Well played, you awful little child, you.”

Harry smiled and stepped hard on his toes.

 

John’s father seemed to be just as besotted with Sherlock as Harry had been.

“John’s told me so much about you. Never shuts up about you, really. From the way my son talks about you, you’d think the suns rises and sets on you. I mean, he-”

“That’s enough, Dad,” John said through gritted teeth, hideously embarrassed by his family for the second time that day.

(But it seemed, though John was fairly sure that he had imagined it, that there was a faint, pleased flush of pink across Sherlock’s cheeks.)

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Watson. Thank you for having me.”

Something plump and furry sat down directly on John’s foot and he looked down to find a very fat Jack Russell terrier.

“Dad? Since when do we have a dog?”

His father bent down to scoop the dog up in his arms. “A few weeks ago. His name’s Henry. Keeps me company. What do you think?”

“He’s great,” John said with a laugh, scratching at Henry’s head. “Cute. Fat.”

“He is, isn’t he? Although he’s not quite housebroken yet. Had an accident on the sofa this morning.”

John chuckled at this and then frowned. “If the sofa’s out of commission, then where are we going to put Sherlock for the night?”

Sherlock cut in before either of them could speak.

“It’s fine, I really don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

But Mr. Watson just laughed as he set Henry on the ground.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can just share John’s bed.”

This, of course, made John choke rather loudly, which in turn led to a coughing fit and everyone in the room staring at him with concern.

“Everything alright there, John?”

“Fine! Fine, I’m fine. I’m going to go put my bags in my room.”

His legs feeling watery, he beat a hasty retreat down the hallway to his bedroom, grateful for a minute alone to pull himself together. But he was only just through the threshold of the doorway when there was a dark, low voice next to his ear. He tensed.

 

“Is it that you’re averse to sharing a bed with me?” Sherlock’s lips were barely a hair’s breadth away from his ear and John shivered despite himself.

 

“No, I’m not, um. I’m not averse. To you. Um. In my bed.”

Sherlock smiled and although on the surface it seemed light and friendly, there was something almost predatory lurking behind it.

“Good.”

 

The rest of the morning went smoothly. John found that it had been pointless to worry about Sherlock deducing anything about Harry or his father. They both seemed to be entranced by it, much to both the surprise and delight of Sherlock. Something about seeing them, seeing Harry and his father laugh as Sherlock looked on with a bewildered but pleased expression, filled John with a strange sort of light.

He had an appointment with Ella later that afternoon and Sherlock had insisted on tagging along.

“You’ll be bored the entire time,” John had warned as they sat in the waiting room. Sherlock waved him off with a hand.

At the end of his session, Ella scribbled a final note on her pad and smiled.

“You’ve made some truly remarkable progress since the last time I saw you.”

“Have I?”

She nodded, smiled again.

“Could it possibly be something to do with the boy in the waiting room who’s been berating the receptionist for the past hour?”

(Shit. He shouldn’t have believed for a minute that back issues of gardening magazines could’ve kept Sherlock entertained and polite for a whole hour.)

“What? No. God no. He’s just a friend.”

(Just an awful, rude, insufferable, arrogant cock of a friend who John was miserably in love with.)

 

 

They went for lunch afterwards in a grotty little café two streets over from Ella’s office. John was the only one who actually ordered a meal, and Sherlock just resorted to swiping bits off his plate, despite John’s best efforts to bat his hands away. It was warm and affectionate and nice and if their legs touched under the table and neither of them moved away, neither of them mentioned it.

That evening at dinner, which was takeaway eaten off paper plates balanced on their knees in the living room, the flat was full of light and laughter for the first time in what felt like years. Sherlock’s face was bright and open and John found himself unable to look away from him sometimes.

But in spite of the easy relaxation of the evening, when it came time to get ready for bed that night, he found himself wracked with apprehension. He undressed quickly, all too aware of the rustling of fabric from Sherlock changing behind him.

 _Just like any other night_ , he told himself. _You change in front of each other every night, so what makes this any different?_

(Because they were sleeping in the same bed tonight and John had to act as if it was totally normal, totally okay. That was a huge fucking difference.)

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a quick flash of pale skin as Sherlock tugged his shirt over his head. He tried to look away, tried to conceal it as an accidental turn of the head, but he couldn’t get the image of the flat, muscled planes of Sherlock’s chest out of his head.

(This was bad, this was very, very bad.)

He tried to focus on pulling on his pyjama pants. When he was done, he turned to head towards the bathroom to brush his teeth. As soon as he turned around, Sherlock quickly snapped his head away, his eyes dark and his face flushed, as if he’d been watching John out of the corner of his eye the same way that John had watched him.

But he hadn’t. Hadn’t he?

(Of course not.)

When they had both finished getting ready, they stood uncomfortably on opposite sides of the room. The bed was a bit bigger than the narrow beds at school, but not by much.

“Do you want to-”

“It’s your bed, you should go first.”

“Right. Right. Yeah, right.”

“If it’s going to be this uncomfortable the entire night, I should just sleep on the floor.”

“No! No, I mean, there’s no reason for that. Just. Um. Come here.”

Sherlock hesitated a moment and then slid in next to John. The bed was narrow and they were pressed together shoulder to thigh.

“This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” John said, looking at the ceiling rather than at Sherlock.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was a low rumble against John’s skin.

“What?”

“You’re elbowing me.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

They lay there for a few minutes more, side by side, not speaking. John’s eyelids began to grow heavy and he was nearly asleep when he heard Sherlock’s voice, hardly even a whisper against the back of his neck.

“You are wonderful.”

 

 

He woke just once, in the middle of the night, wondering in his sleepy haze what the warm weight wrapped around his body was. Sometime in the middle of the night, Sherlock had shifted over to John’s side of the bed, one leg thrown over John’s, his arms locking securely around John’s middle. A hand had snaked up John’s shirt to rest broad and warm on his stomach and his face rested in John’s hair, his lips almost but not quite touching the back of his neck.

It was incredibly intimate and absolutely amazing and John felt strangely secure.

(He also felt heat pooling low in his stomach, but he tried his best to ignore that. He didn’t even want to think of what would happen if it got out that he found being in such close proximity to Sherlock arousing.)

 _To hell with the consequences_ , John decided.

He nestled in closer and in his sleep, Sherlock’s arms tightened around him, his lips making nonsense words on the sensitive skin on the back of John’s neck.

It was the best that John had ever slept.

 

 

When he woke up, Sherlock was already awake, bent over John and peering down at him curiously.

“Did you know that with two people sharing a bed, the shorter partner, in this case yourself, often-”

John rolled over and clamped his hands over his ears with a groan.

“Too bloody early for this, Sherlock. And have you been watching me sleep all morning?”

“Yes. No. Maybe.”

“That’s really creepy, you know that?”

So they had slept together and yet somehow nothing had changed.

 

 

The rest of the day passed quietly and before long, they were on the train back to school. Harry had passed out within the first five minutes, her small form stretched out across two seats. Sherlock sat quiet, staring out the window, John fidgeting with his mobile.

Suddenly there was a weight in John’s lap and he looked down to find that Sherlock had spread himself out across the seats and used John’s legs as a pillow.

“Don’t bother trying to get me to move,” he said around a yawn. “I won’t.”

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t try to make you.”

“Good.”

After a minute, he rested his hand carefully in Sherlock’s hair. When he made an approving noise, John began to run his fingers through it. The curls were soft and thick and he could feel himself being lulled to sleep by the peacefulness of it all.

“I meant what I said last night, you know,” Sherlock mumbled.

“Mmm? What’s that?”

“That you’re wonderful.”

“Oh.”

(John thought that Sherlock was pretty wonderful too.)

 

 

When they got back to school, Molly was sitting on a bench outside of their building, face tucked into her scarf against the cold. She waved a hand in greeting, which Sherlock ignored in favor of walking into the building, but John slowed down to talk to her.

“You’ll freeze out here, Molls,” he said, huffing a warm breath into his hands.

She laughed. “It’s fine. I’m waiting for Jim. He’s taking me out.”

“Oh really? That’s nice. Where’re you two going?”

“No clue. So, where’d you two disappear to this weekend?” Her tone was teasing, insinuating and John felt himself bristle slightly.

“He…er, he came to London. With me. To visit my family.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

“Yes. Shut up. I know what you’re thinking.”

“John-”

“Really, Molly we’re not…we’re not like that. He’s not- well, he’s Sherlock.”

Molly’s face instantly dropped her teasing smirk, softening with concern and a look of exasperation, a _why haven’t you figured this out yet?_

“John. Have you even seen the way he looks at you? He’s completely, hopelessly besotted and from the way you’re blushing, I’d say you are too.”

“It’s the cold. And I’m not…he’s not…”

“He is,” Molly said, fixing him with a firm look. “I’ve known him for years and I’ve never seen him act this way with someone. You really should talk to him about it, because he won’t, and it’s obviously making the two of you miserable.

“Er…yeah. Have fun on your date. I’ll see you later.” John shoved his hands in his pockets and began to walk away, taking quicker steps than normal.

“Think about what I said!” was Molly’s shouted goodbye.

There was no way that she was right about this. This was _Sherlock_ that they were talking about, Sherlock who was cold and who was impatient and who certainly didn’t get _besotted_ with anyone, least of all John.

No, she had to have been imagining it and there was no point in getting his hopes up. He dug his nails hard into the ball of his fist as he made his way up the stairs.

When he reached the top of the stairs, there was the loud slam of a door at the end of the hallway, and then a familiar long-legged mass of black curls hurtling at top speed towards him.

“Sherlock, what the _hell_ are you doing?”

But there was no response; Sherlock pushed past him down the stairs.

John made his way cautiously down the hall to the room, sniffing the air around him for the slightest hint of some sort of noxious chemical that might’ve caused Sherlock to bolt. But there was nothing, no hint that anything at all was wrong

He pushed open their door carefully, slowly but once again everything was sound and secure. For once, an experiment wasn’t monopolizing the room, their beds were neatly made, his desk cleared off with his letter opened and lying in the center.

_Wait a minute._

There was a sudden, cold weight in John’s stomach that took root and spread its tendrils all across his body and his mouth opened around a silent litany of _oh shit oh shit oh shit_.

Sherlock had found the letter.

Sherlock had read the letter.

Sherlock knew.

He was worried for a minute that his legs would give out from under him and he staggered out to the hallway, slumping against the doorframe with his head resting in his hands.  
Sherlock knew. Sherlock knew and now John had ruined the very best friendship that he’d ever had.

 _Fuck_. He hoped, at least, that Sherlock wouldn’t try and force him to move out of the room with only a few months left before the end of the school year. This was bad, this was very, very bad. He groaned.

(So that was why Sherlock had bolted. Didn’t want to be around John, didn’t want to deal with feelings, emotions. Figures. And it was exactly what John deserved for hoping for a split second that Sherlock might actually return his feelings.)

There was the sound once more of the door from the stairway opening and then footsteps down the hall. He could’ve recognized the sound of the footsteps anywhere and suddenly his panic was replaced with anger. Sherlock had to have known that the letter was private. It had been hidden, tucked away in his book but he had completed disregarded that and gone ahead and read it.

“I can’t believe you,” he said in a low voice, standing up as Sherlock approached. “I really fucking can’t. That was private, Sherlock.”

“You shouldn’t have kept in in the room, then.” Sherlock’s tone was condescending but his eyes wouldn’t focus on John’s.

John clenched his hands into fists and tried his best not to punch him.

“Sherlock, I thought I was going to die, do you understand? I was a little incoherent and I think I’ve got more than a little right to keep my dying thoughts private.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“The letter was addressed to me, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“You know what, Sherlock? I really don’t give a fuck. I really don’t.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Shut up, John.”

John took a step towards Sherlock, staring up at him with a blazing sort of anger, jabbing a finger hard into his chest.

“Make me.”

And suddenly Sherlock’s hands were fisted in the collar of John’s shirt and John felt himself being tugged inside the room, Sherlock shutting the door with his foot and pushing John hard up against the wall. They stared at each other for a long, heated moment and then suddenly, just like that, Sherlock’s lips were pressed firm against John’s.

John could do nothing but stand still in shock for a moment, but then Sherlock’s tongue swept across his bottom lip and his mouth opened almost involuntarily and suddenly he found that he was kissing Sherlock back.  
Sherlock’s hands let go of his collar to rest in his hair and on the back of his neck. The kiss was a wild, frenzied thing and John’s hands pressed and moved over Sherlock’s back and shoulders.

It was amazing. It was perfect and it was glorious and it was everything that John had wanted and so much more. He had no idea why it had taken him so long to do this, this thing that they should’ve been doing from the start. Sherlock was wonderfully responsive, making soft little noises every time John did something that he liked, which seemed to be often. What Sherlock lacked in finesse, he made up for in sheer enthusiasm and there was soon a pleasant, low thrum of arousal in John’s belly.

Just when the kiss appeared to be becoming something deeper, Sherlock pulled away, still entwined with John, but enough so that their mouths were no longer pressed together. He looked amazing like this, all tousled dark curls and kiss-swollen lips and John couldn’t resist leaning forward to press another kiss to his mouth, grinning a little at the pleased flush across his cheeks that it created.

“How could you not know?” Sherlock’s voice was hushed and shaky. “From the start, John, from the very start.”

John was about to ask him what this meant when his mobile, tucked inside of the pocket of his jacket, started to go off, completely shattering the mood.

“I should…er, I should get that.”

Sherlock nodded, his mouth pressed in a thin line. Whatever magic that had been before had been shattered.

As soon as John held his mobile up to his ear, the voice began to speak, not even bothering for him to say anything first. It was vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t quite trace it.

“Listen to me, Johnny boy, because I’m only going to say this once. Don’t react to this phone call at all. When I’m done speaking, you’re going to hang up, take the copy of Grimm’s that I know that you and Sherlock have, and go towards the field about halfway between the school and the town. Don’t tell Sherlock anything about the call or where you’re going and come alone. I’ll know if you do otherwise. Now say, ‘and why would I do that?’”

John felt a prickle of nervousness in his stomach, but he pressed forth regardless. “And why would I do that?”

“I’m glad you asked. Perhaps you might like to ask your friend Miss Hooper? I’d let you speak to her, but I’m afraid she’s out cold at the moment. Come alone with the book if that’s all the harm you want to see inflicted on her tonight. Be there within the hour.”

There was the _click_ of whoever was on the other end hanging up and John was left standing in the center of the room, feeling sick to his stomach.

He had Molly. He had Molly and he was going to hurt her and oh god this was his fault.

“John?” Sherlock’s voice was nonchalant but there was an undercurrent of concern. “Is everything alright?”

John gave a smile that didn’t feel quite right on his face. “Fine. Everything’s fine. I just need to clear my head. I’m going to go for a walk.”

Sherlock made a scramble for his coat. “I’ll come with you.”

John shook his head, dreading having to leave Sherlock behind. “I’d rather go alone, if you don’t mind.

Sherlock slumped a bit, frown tugging at his mouth in spite of himself.

“Oh, that’s…fine.”

Something in John’s chest twisted at the sight of Sherlock like this, but he forced himself to press forward, for Molly’s sake.

And when he walked out the door, he didn’t let himself say goodbye.

 

The field was chilly and seemingly empty, covered with a thin layer of slush. John waited for a moment for someone to appear, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. For whatever reason, someone had taken the time to dig a decent sized hole right in the center of the field and he stared at it as he waited, until he was about to shout for the unseen kidnapper to reveal himself.

“Ah John, _so_ nice of you to join us. Glad to see that you didn’t bring your boyfriend along.” It was Jim Moriarty, the innocent mask from the previous weeks dropped in favor of something cold and reptilian.

“ _You_?”

He chuckled.

“Yes, me. Surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner. But I suppose Sherlock is the brains in your relationship.”

John fought to keep his voice calm and level.

“Where’s Molly? I swear, if you hurt her-”

But Jim just chuckled again and held out his empty hands.

“As far as I know, Molly’s safe and sound in her room. Really, you ordinary lot can be so damn gullible sometimes. Ridiculous.”

“Jim, this is…sick. Really fucking sick. And seeing as Molly’s safe, I’m leaving.”

Jim made an exaggerated frown.

“I was rather hoping you wouldn’t say that. But of course, that’s what dear Sebastian’s for.”

John didn’t even have the time to ask who Sebastian was before he caught a glimpse of the wiry, blond boy from before, who was suddenly in front of him and wielding a gun. There was a sudden, sharp _crack_ that sounded like it was coming from inside of his head and then everything was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the cliffhanger, but it's the last one, I swear!


	12. Chapter 12

The world was too bright, too painful when John opened his eyes. He could feel a sizeable lump forming on his temple from where Sebastian had hit him with the butt of the gun and he gave a low groan.

 _Concussion, most likely_ , the small part of his brain that was still working rationally.

His hands had been bound behind his back with zip ties that cut painfully into the skin of his wrist. He was lying in the middle of the field, with Jim and Sebastian sitting a ways off conversing, a sour tasting rag shoved into his mouth.

He squirmed a bit, trying to test the strength of his bonds, and Sebastian nudged Jim.

“Jimmy,” he said, bumping him again with his elbow. “He’s up.”

Jim lazily untangled himself from Sebastian and stood up and moved closer to John, peering down at him with cold eyes. He snipped the gag from his mouth with a pocket knife, cutting too close to the skin and leaving a long line of blood across John’s cheek.

“John,” he said, his voice too loud, an electric jolt of pain to John’s pounding head. Seeing him winced, he giggled. “Sorry about that. Aren’t the zip ties a nice touch? Seb did them for me.”

“Why the hell are you doing this?” John was all too aware that his voice was slightly slurred. “I gave you the book. We had nothing to do with it, Sherlock and me. Why go to the trouble of killing me?”

Jim ignored him in favor of pacing back and forth in front of his prone body. John took the opportunity to attempt to wiggle his hands out of the ties, or at least to get some blood flowing into his wrist. Jim suddenly stilled and looked down at him, tone light but eyes feral, wild.

“Don’t even think about it, Johnny. Even if you manage to escape, which you won’t, Seb will happily shoot you in the leg before you manage to even leave the clearing. Did you know that it takes the femoral artery under three minutes to bleed out?”

Seb gave a toothy grin.

“But it’s not anything personal, really. You’re not important in the grand scheme of things. You’re the bait. I wonder, John, what his face will look like when he watches Seb put a bullet in your heart?”

The words left a cold twist in John’s gut and suddenly he felt the strangest mix of fear and calm. Sherlock would get him out of this. He always did.

(He _had_ to.)

“You realize that when Sherlock realizes that there’s something wrong, he’ll call the police? He may be a complete arse, but he’s not an idiot.”

Jim laughed.

“No, no he’s not, which is precisely why he won’t do that. Can’t resist a good puzzle, can he, even when he knows that your life is at stake? Tell me, do you mean anything to him at all, or are you just a distraction between more interesting things, like me?”

There was a prickle of fear when John considered the all too likely possibility that Jim’s words were true. After all, this was Sherlock whom they were talking about, Sherlock, who didn’t know that it was wrong to use someone’s infatuation with him to get what he wanted, who wasn’t above berating a grieving widow to find out information. Who was to say that John actually meant something to him?

(But John remembered the way that he had whispered “You are wonderful” into his neck in the middle of the night, all of his clumsy, lovely attempts at comforting, the way that his voice had gone a bit soft and gentle after they had kissed and he had said, “From the start”. Sherlock was brilliant and real and human and he cared for John just as much as John did for him and John would be true to him.)

So he said nothing, just tried to keep his gaze level, tried to keep the fear from his eyes.

“Regardless, I think it’ll break him delightfully when he comes here to find you about to die, don’t you? Teach him to stay out of my way.”

“Are you sure about that? You’re right; I never could resist a puzzle. But enough is enough, Jim.”

He knew that voice. He knew it better than any other.

Sherlock strode into the clearing, looking entirely too composed, the gun from Mrs. Peck’s stretched in his hand (and John _knew_ he had been looking at it that day with a bit too much interest. He should’ve been expecting him to nick it). But John could see through the veneer of calm; his hands trembled around the trigger and when he saw John, lying battered and bruised with his hands tied, something in his face broke, just a little.

( _Get away_ , he wanted to tell him. _Run, run and forget about me_.)

“What are you going to do? _Shoot_ me?” Jim’s voice was quiet and mocking. “You try that and Sebby here will put a bullet in John’s heart before you can blink. Don’t even bother.”

“Don’t be so predictable. I came to offer my congratulations.”

Jim arched an eyebrow.  
“Is that so? What do you expect me to do, tell you just why I did it and how? Bit cliché, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. But indulge me.”

Jim smiled and it was a wolf’s smile, without humor or kindness.

“Well, I won’t give away all my secrets. But let’s just say that I’ve got…friends in high places, who’ve taken an interest with me. This, the theft of that book, was supposed to be my proving moment. But it got messed up. Someone stole from me and I couldn’t let that go unpunished, could I?”

“So you killed everyone who could’ve had contact with the book, everyone who might’ve been the thief in order to get it back.”

“More or less. Though Seb did the actual killing. Don’t like getting my hands dirty. But the fairy tale things was a nice touch, hmm?”

“Brilliant, really.”

Jim smiled again.

“I knew _someone_ would appreciate. Seb told me that it was just asking to get caught, but I think of it more as a sort of calling out. To find someone else who’s as clever as me.”

“Someone like me.” Sherlock hadn’t lowered the gun, not once, but one hand was moving behind his back, though John was too far away to see what he was doing.

Jim shrugged.

“At first I thought so. But you slipped up. Let yourself get attached. To someone as dull as _him_ too.” He looked down at John with disgust.

Sherlock said nothing, just kept his lips pressed into a tight line.

“If you’re such a criminal genius then, why become a student here? Surely after committing several murders, you’re not afraid of truancy charges.”

Jim chuckled at this, a low and dangerous sound.

“Easier to keep an eye on who had the book. After Peck’s death, I wasn’t sure who had it. I’d never thought that it was the wife who had bought it from Brooks. So the school was the best place to hide out until I sussed out whose hands it had fallen into. Once I’d figured out it was Mrs. Peck, it was just a matter of applying pressure on her until she gave the book up. Everyone has their pressure point, Sherlock. For her, it was her daughter. For you, it’s John.”

Sherlock winced.

“So that’s why she tried to kill us. A way to throw you off her scent, of proving that she was loyal to you. But it didn’t work.”

“Of course it didn’t. You can’t fool me. It was only a matter of time until I realized that she didn’t have the book anymore, at which point it would only make sense for you two to have it. Which brings us here, to this little rendezvous. I’ve already gotten the book from John, so that bit’s done. It’s just you I’m worried about now, dear.”

“Me?”

The pain in John’s head had heightened to a stabbing throb and he was beginning to see black spots dancing before his vision. He rolled over onto his stomach and vomited into the damp grass. Jim wrinkled his nose with disgust.

“Yes, you. You’ve made quite the admirable opponent throughout this whole thing. Bravo, really, you’ve made it all quite fun. But that’s through now. It was nice while it lasted, but I can’t have you mucking up my plans anymore. So I’ll show you what happens if you get into my way. Seb?”

Seb stood up, stretched languorously and then made his way over to John. He prodded him up into a kneeling position with the end of his gun and for the first time since he had arrived, John met Sherlock’s eyes.

He knew that he must look a mess: a throbbing lump on his head, blood dripping from the wound on his cheek, covered with grass stains and his own sick. But Sherlock looked at him with a strange mix of tenderness and fear in his eyes, as if he was silently willing John to be safe.

John could feel the iron cold of the muzzle of the rifle against the back of his head. There was the click of the safety being taken off.

Jim smiled. “Count of three, Seb.”

“Stop. Stop, please.”

“1…”

“Anything but John. Anything but him.”

“2…”

“I’ll do anything you ask. Just don’t bloody shoot!” Sherlock’s voice was frenzied, filled with terror.

“3…”

John shut his eyes tight, praying that there was at least no pain before oblivion took him, but there was nothing. No noise, not bullet, nothing. He opened his eyes reluctantly.

“Put your weapon down.”

The voice was familiar but he couldn’t quite place it and as Sebastian’s rifle moved away from the nape of his neck, he swiveled his head to see who it could’ve been.

It was Lestrade, along with two other policemen, their weapons leveled at Sebastian and Jim. Sherlock scowled.

“Took you all long enough. He could’ve been killed thanks to your dawdling.”

There was a moment of crackling tension as Sebastian moved his rifle away from John’s head but still pointing in his general direction. Lestrade cleared his throat.

“I’ll tell you one more time, put your weapon do-”

But the rest of his warning was cut off in a sudden percussive blast. There was suddenly incredible, explosive agony in John’s leg, enough to make him see stars, and he remembered Jim’s fact from beforehand about how long it took the femoral artery to bleed out.

Three minutes wasn’t very long, not long at all for the rest of one’s life.

There were more quick blasts of gunshots from above but he couldn’t hear anything save for Sherlock’s voice low in his ear.

“Don’t die on me don’t die on me don’t you fucking die on me, John, do you understand? Don’t you dare. I’ll bring you back to life and kill you all over again if you die on me. You can’t die. I love you so you can’t die.”

John could feel Sherlock’s hand pressed on his leg in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. He was cold, cold all over, but he tried to speak regardless.

“You can’t kill me if I’m already dead.”

Sherlock made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“You always told me that I was capable of impossible things.”

After that the world was black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi so I know that I said no more cliffhangers but this is really the last one this time, I promise. (Really.) I know this next chapter is short but the next one will be kind of long because it's the last one (except for an epilogue) and because feelings need to be sorted out. Next chapter will make up for all the ridiculousness of this chapter, because it'll probably be ridiculously fluffy.  
> ALSO: brief warning for anyone who doesn't like adult content. There might. Um. Be some of that next chapter. So be warned.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last real proper chapter, but it's not quite the end just yet- there's still a quick epilogue-y bit!  
> I really hope you enjoy this!

John was fairly certain that he was not dead.

However, being dead would almost be preferable to his current state. There was some kind of insistent beeping noise that echoed through his head in waves of throbbing pain, his left hand was apparently being crushed by something, and there was a dull ache in his leg that he didn’t want to think about, because he knew it was on the verge of tipping into agony.

He shifted gingerly, opening his eyes just a crack. Whoever’s hand it was that had been squeezed tight around his moved away quickly.

When he opened his eyes all the way, Sherlock was sitting there, in an uncomfortable looking plastic chair, staring at the window that was just beyond John. His hair was a wild tangle, curls sticking up in all directions, and his eyes were lined with dark circles. He was still wearing the same clothes that John had last seen him in, but now his clean white school shirt had a dark patch of rusty brown.

“Your father just left twenty minutes ago to get something to eat. He came down here from London about two hours ago.” Sherlock still wasn’t looking at John.

“Oh.”

And then, after another moment:

“Care to tell me what happened?”

“As soon as I realized what was going on, I called Lestrade and then tried to stall Jim for as long as possible. It worked in that neither of us died, but it failed in that both Sebastian and Jim escaped and that you were injured.” Sherlock was still looking at the window, but his voice was soft, careful.

“About that. The injury.”

“The bullet didn’t hit anything vital. You’ve only been out for a few hours. You did lose a lot of blood and there’s some damage to the bone, but you’ll just be on crutches for a while. Nothing too bad.”

“It could’ve been worse.”

“It could’ve been much worse.” Sherlock looked at him then, pale eyes searching his. John could only hold his gaze for a moment, and then was forced to look away.

“We’ve got to make statements to the police, by the way,” Sherlock said, clearing his throat. “I was able to put mine off for as long as possible, thanks to Mycroft actually coming in handy for once, but as soon as they know you’re awake, they’ll want to talk to both of us.”

(Of course Mycroft was involved with this; it explained the private room and why Sherlock was able to stay, despite not being family.)

“Why didn’t you just make your statement? I’d have thought that you’d be eager to see all of this mess to its end.”

Sherlock fixed John with a look that very clearly said _You’re an idiot_.

“You were here, so that’s where my priorities lie.”

(And John remembered the things that Sherlock had said to him when he lay bleeding on the grass. He remembered the kiss that afternoon in their room, Sherlock’s hands wrinkling his collar.)

 _Get this sorted_ , he told himself. _Don’t mess this up_.

“Sherlock, about everything that went on yesterday-”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow and John suddenly felt very ill.

“Well, I mean, what I’m trying to say is-” He shifted to try and face Sherlock more, and something in his leg twinged and he was unable to stifle a gasp of pain. The questioning look on Sherlock’s face turned instantly to one of worry.

“Not the time, John.”

“But-”

“You’re in tremendous pain, or you’re about to be once that morphine wears off, and I’m exhausted. Later. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

It wasn’t a no. It wasn’t a yes, true, but it wasn’t a no. And Sherlock’s face had gone a bit soft when he’d said that, hands fidgeting in his lap.

John slumped down on his pillows. He stretched out his arm in an unspoken question and Sherlock’s hand wrapped around his, his chair moving closer to John’s bed so that he could lean his head against John’s shoulder.

And just like that, they slept.

 

Sherlock was right. A few hours later, when John was on the stirring edge between sleeping and waking, there was a polite sniff from the other end of the room.

It was Mycroft standing in the doorway, with Lestrade standing a few steps behind.

“As much as I hate to break up this charming little scene, I’m afraid that DI Lestrade does need your statements now.”

Sherlock blinked a few times, lifting his head from John’s shoulder.

“Piss off, Mycroft,” he said blearily.

Mycroft’s smile was tight and thin, lips stretching across his teeth.

“Now, if you please, Sherlock.”

They did their statements, Sherlock first and then John, in an unused office room somewhere in the hospital. Lestrade scrubbed his hands across his face after hearing John’s account, eyebrows raised.

“Christ. Well, don’t be surprised twenty years from now when Scotland Yard comes knocking on one of your doors asking for help with a case.”

John laughed.

“I’d rather be a doctor, sir, but thank you.”

He wheeled himself out of the office room (It had only been two hours and he already hated the wheelchair that he was confined to until he could get crutches; he felt useless, crippled in a way that he hadn’t since the accident.)

Sherlock was sitting in the hallway waiting for him, slumped against the wall, tossing his phone lazily up and down.

“Hey.”

“Hello.”

They were silent for a minute, the only noise in the hallway the creak of John’s wheels and the slap of Sherlock’s phone hitting his hand.

“I think…I think I’m ready now. That is, if you are.” Sherlock’s voice was hardly a whisper.

“Ready for- oh right. Right, of course.”

John wheeled himself a bit closer to Sherlock and then carefully lowered himself out of the wheelchair, stretching his bad leg gingerly out on the ground. They sat there, in the tiny alcove in the hallway, facing each other.

“You’ve got to know, John, that I’m not…one for hollow sentiment. This isn’t going to be some saccharine moment like in the films where I declare my love for you while running through the airport to stop you from catching your plane or anything.”

John rolled his eyes. Even in moments like these, he was never unsure of exactly whom he was speaking to.

“I wouldn’t expect it to be. Christ, I wouldn’t want it to be. Just…you do, right? Care? Because I’ve already done my part. I laid everything out there when you went behind my back and read that letter. Now it’s your turn.”

Sherlock’s hands were twisted together in his lap and he wasn’t looking at John.

“I know.”

“Why’d you even read the letter in the first place?”

“It was easy enough to figure out where you’d hidden it. By trying to make it difficult to find, you made it the easiest thing in the world. I can read you better than I can read anyone else. And I read it because…well, because I knew whatever you’d written in it would be your dying declaration. I wasn’t curious until after that visit to London, when I realized that there could be something in there about me, that you might have feelings beyond friendship. And there was. Took you long enough, by the way.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“It took you over six months to realize. Do you know how long it took me? Under two.”

Suddenly all the air had been sucked out of the hallway, and John remembered Sherlock’s words: _from the start, from the very start_.

Sherlock ignored the reaction that John was having to continue speaking.

“It wasn’t until you went on that date with the boring girl from your French class that I realized that what I was feeling was more than just fondness. I thought- actually scratch that, I _think_ , because I still feel all these things, that you’re clever, despite your attempts to prove me otherwise, and kind and brave and funny and loyal and handsome and I love you. I love you.”

He took a deep, shuddery breath.

“It’s awful, being in love, did you know that? I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Takes up all of your time, doesn’t let you think, makes you jealous and petty and dull. And I thought, for the longest time, that you’d never be interested in me, that you only cared for girls. And I was pining over you, actually pining, and it was embarrassing and undignified and terrifying and you better be grateful, John Watson for what I went through for you. Can you imagine me lovesick? It’s humiliating. Still is.”

John’s mouth hung open and he wanted both for Sherlock to keep talking and to shut up so that he could kiss him, but he wasn’t sure how to express either of these things.

“Anyways, after I read the letter, I still wasn’t sure. Who was to say that your feelings weren’t brought on by some desperation in the face of death? But the way you reacted to my having read it told me the truth, even though I sometimes still don’t really believe it.”

John was trying to speak but he still couldn’t quite form words. Sherlock was still refusing to look at him.

“So that’s that then. Congratulations. Only you could make falling in love the most ridiculous, overcomplicated event ever. I mean, most of all this nonsense is your fault really, because you didn’t realize it until a few months ago. If you’d only been a bit cleverer and if you hadn’t dated that girl, we could’ve had ages. I love you in spite of it, but really. Sometimes, you’re not very too quick on the upt-”

Whatever Sherlock was about to say was cut off when John pressed his lips against his, ignoring the pain in his leg. Sherlock made a muffled noise of surprise against John’s mouth, and then his arms came up to wrap around John’s middle, one hand tangling in John’s hair.

John pulled away after a minute.

“I love you too, you absolute bastard.”

He had wanted to say more, but Sherlock was already pulling him down for another kiss, and that was much more important.

 

Two days later, John was released from the hospital. His father walked with him up to the doorway of his building, rain beating down on his umbrella.

“Be careful, John,” he said gruffly, his hand resting on John’s shoulder.

“Of course, Dad.”

He turned to leave and then stopped, doubling back around.

“You and Sherlock…you’re…”

“Yeah. We are.”

His father was quiet for a moment, and then smiled.

“Good for you two. I guessed that there was something there, back when you came to visit. You’ll be good for each other.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

There was a quick hug and then he was gone.

Classes were still going on for the day; John would be going back tomorrow, but Sherlock was already back, and so the room was empty when he came in. His leg aching already, he rested his crutches carefully against the wall and swung himself into his bed.

John had told himself that he was only going to lie there for a minute before he tackled his massive stack of makeup work, but the next thing he knew, he was being woken up by the scrape of Sherlock’s key in the lock.

John hadn’t seen him at all since the first day at the hospital. After they had kissed, Mycroft had appeared, tugging Sherlock away from a flame-faced John. From that point on, he had barely seen Sherlock, besides the occasional text or call. They’d been together once, briefly, when Sherlock came to drop off his missed work, but he had barely even spoken to him, leaving John confused and the slightest bit hurt.

He didn’t realize how much he would miss him but he did; it was like losing a limb or one of his senses. He didn’t quite function right without him.

The door opened. Sherlock stood for a minute in the doorframe, hair plastered to his head from the rain. At first he didn’t say anything at all, and John had the faint, sickening feeling that everything that had been said was just a one-time thing.

But Sherlock just shrugged off his coat and set his books down on his desk, making his way over towards John. He loomed over him, water from his hair and skin dripping onto John’s forehead.

“Hey there,” John said softly.

Sherlock said nothing for a moment, then pushed John over gently and climbed into bed with him.

“I missed you,” was all he said, gently, quietly, and then he was kissing him.

This wasn’t like the furious, hungry first kiss or the careful, deliberate kiss from the hospital, where Sherlock had seemed desperate to prove that he did, in fact, love John. This was soft and gentle, with Sherlock moving carefully to avoid John’s injured leg.

“Why didn’t you do this before?” John asked in between Sherlock’s careful kisses. “At the hospital, when you came to see me that last time?”

“Afraid of hurting you,” was Sherlock reply, mumbled into the skin behind John’s ear.

“You idiot,” John said, his words turning into a huff of air at the end of his sentence as Sherlock made his way down his neck. Sherlock was sucking hard enough to leave a mark, and John knew he’d have to be careful with his collar tomorrow morning. “I haven’t turned into a bloody flower just because I got shot.”

Sherlock laughed, and John could feel the deep, percussive rumble of his laugh all through his body. He reached up to thread his hands through Sherlock’s hair.

Sherlock had unbuttoned John’s shirt and, it seemed, was intent on mapping out every inch of John’s skin. He’d started with his neck and was making his way down his collarbones to his chest, and was currently gently probing at the gnarled knot of scar tissue stretching across John’s shoulder blade.

John, who previously had been letting himself sink into a warm haze of affection and pleasure, tensed when Sherlock’s hand ghosted across the scar.

“Sherlock,” he began, his voice a hushed warning.

But Sherlock said nothing in return, simply pressed his lips gently to it and continued his exploration of John’s middle.

“You had appendicitis,” he said, running his fingers over the small, diagonal scar just above John’s hipbone. His fingers were cold and his touch was electricity. “Six years old, right?”

“Seven.” It was getting a bit difficult for John to speak in complete sentences, not when Sherlock was alternating kissing him with running his hands and fingers and mouth over his chest and arms.

“Close enough.” He dipped back down again for another kiss.

Then his hands brushed against John’s hipbones, fingertips slipping underneath the waistband on John’s trousers in a silent question.

“Go on then,” John said, eyes screwing shut. “We’ve only been dancing around this for seven bloody months.”

Sherlock chuckled, pressing his mouth to John’s hipbone and slid John’s trousers down to his knees, carefully avoiding his bandages. There was a long moment when the two just stared at each other, and John realized how little either of them knew what they were doing, and then without warning, Sherlock’s mouth was around him.

For a minute, John’s vision went a bit blurry around the edges and he wasn’t able to do anything much besides fist his hands in his blanket and tilt his hips upwards involuntarily and then stifle an embarrassingly high pitched groan. From below, he could hear Sherlock’s low laugh.

“Someone’s a bit touchy.” The words seemed to vibrate with a life of their own on his oversensitized skin, and John squirmed.

“Shut up. Shut up. Oh my god, Sherlock, just shut up.”

There was another quiet laugh, and John tangled his fingers in Sherlock’s hair.

“Just keep- oh bloody Christ, _Sherlock_ \- just keep doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing.”

There was an appreciative hum from Sherlock, who was doing something particularly fantastic with his tongue. He groaned.

John was biting down on his hand now, all too aware of how thin the dormitory walls were, and it was only a moment longer before there was a warm pull low in his stomach.

“Oh god, Sherlock-”

Sherlock pulled off him to kiss him once more and then John’s world was lost in a sea of white. He groaned into Sherlock’s mouth.

After it had faded into a few sporadic aftershocks of warmth, he reached up to cup Sherlock through his trousers. It only took a few strokes before Sherlock was shuddering on top of him, fingers gripping white knuckled into John’s shoulders.

They lay there for a few minutes in an overheated, sweaty heap, Sherlock’s nose pressed into the crook of John’s neck, John’s trousers still around his legs. Sherlock was trembling all over and John was about to ask him what was wrong, before he realized that he was laughing.

“You know, that was ridiculous. The most ridiculous thing we’ve ever done,” he said into Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Undoubtedly.” Sherlock was still laughing and it was pleasant and warm and John couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy. “You know, it’ll get better eventually. Once we figure out what we’re doing.”

“If it gets any better, it’ll kill me.”

Sherlock snorted. “Don’t say that, you idiot.”

John reached up to press a kiss to his collarbone, the closest part of Sherlock that he could reach.

“Not going anywhere, you wanker. I love you.”

“In spite of whatever remains of my common sense, I love you too.”

(And really, John was fairly sure that he had never been so happy in his life.)

 

_Three Months Later_

“Christ, Sherlock, you know that we’re going to get fined by the school because you’ve left fucking burn marks along the wall? You’re paying for that, I hope you realize.”

Their room was an explosion of half packed trunks, shirts and books and papers spilling out over their beds and across the floor. Sherlock, while packing up chemicals nicked from the school’s lab, had accidentally spilled something clear and fizzing all over one of John’s most comfortable jumpers, leaving it a holey, pockmarked mess that needed to be binned immediately.

(John wasn’t sure how much of an accident it was.)

“Mmm, right.”

Sherlock wasn’t quite paying attention to whatever it was that John was saying, having immersed himself in something under the bed.

“What the hell are you doing down there?”

His head emerged from underneath the bed, gray tufts of dust bunnies mixing in with his dark curls.

“Retrieving some experiments. Light sensitive. I told you the first day of school. Don’t you ever listen to a word I say?”

“I try not to.”  
The end of term was tomorrow, the last of exams having ended yesterday. Some people were already gone; Molly had left early, off on holiday in Spain with her family, Sarah was leaving this morning.

John hadn’t quite been looking forward to the end as much as everyone else. Whether or not he and Sherlock would be rooming together next year wasn’t even a question, and in three weeks, Sherlock would be coming to stay with them in London for the rest of the summer. But still, three weeks was a long while, and it was strange to think that after tomorrow morning, he wouldn’t be seeing Sherlock every day.

 _Although_ , he thought as he saw what Sherlock had dug up from underneath his bed, _that might be nicer than expected._

“Look, John! This one’s sprouted maggots!” Sherlock thrust the petri dish under John’s nose like a proud parent showing off his child.

“Yes, lovely. God, you’d make an awful flatmate.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be dramatic, John. We’ve only lived together for a year. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you’d be able to cope with having me as a flatmate.”

“Roommate and flatmate are two entirely separate things and boyfriend or not, I shudder to think of what any permanent living space of yours would be like. I love you and all, but you’re not always great with the whole shared living spaces bit.”

Sherlock adopted a mock hurt expression.

“You wound me, John.”

“Oh shut up,” John said, winding his arms around Sherlock’s neck. “All I’m saying is, I feel bad for whatever poor bugger’s mad enough to move in with you one day. Although it didn’t work out too bad for me.”  
“No, it really didn’t. Random housing assignment and what did you get out of it?”  
“A nasty scar on my leg, two months on crutches, death threats from an aspiring criminal mastermind and a nutter who follows me around claiming to be my boyfriend?”

“Exactly. And a _handsome_ nutter.”

“Very true.”

And then they were kissing and it had become familiar over the months but it didn’t make it any less thrilling.

John was grateful for that. He was grateful for everything that had led him to Sherlock and everything about Sherlock. At first, when he’d been writing the letter in Mrs. Peck’s basement, he’d been scared because he knew what he felt for Sherlock was real, that it wasn’t going away any time soon. But he wasn’t scared anymore.

He was sure.

And that was enough for him.


	14. Epilogue

_Twenty Years Later_

There were seventeen steps leading up to 221B. Sherlock bounded up them three at a time, John followed behind a bit slower.

“Nice,” he said when he finally made it into the flat. “Very nice.”

“Thought so too,” Sherlock said, bringing his arm up around John’s shoulder. “Think this is it?”

“I bloody well hope so, seeing as you’ve somehow managed to move half your things in here under my nose.” They hadn’t even properly moved in yet and already the flat was a bit of a tip, covered with the books and papers and test tubes and sheer _clutter_ that seemed to trail in Sherlock’s wake. John went to go poke around the kitchen, absentmindedly opening and shutting drawers and cabinets and checking the fridge and-

“Christ, Sherlock!”

“Oh,” Sherlock said from the living room, his voice a bored drawl. “I see you’ve found the tongues. Don’t touch them please; they’re for an experiment.”

“Wasn’t planning on it. God, sometimes I really question my sanity in staying with you for so long.”

“Your sanity, no. Your intelligence and sense of self preservation, perhaps.”

“Mmm. You do make it worth my while, though.”

“As do you.”

Twenty years was a hell of a long time, the better portion of John’s life, spent with Sherlock. He wondered, briefly, what his life would’ve been like had he not met Sherlock at school, the kind of person he would be, that Sherlock would be, if they would ever even meet at all. It seemed unfathomable.

“There’s another bedroom upstairs, Dr. Watson, if you’ll be needing two bedrooms.” Their landlady had poked her head into the room and was now fussing over Sherlock.

“That ah. That won’t be necessary. But thank you.”

She nodded at them approvingly.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ve got all types around here. Mrs. Turner next door’s got married ones.” The last two words were in a conspiratorial whisper, and from the way that she flicked her gaze between Sherlock and John, there seemed to be some sort of implication.

“Oh god, no we’re not married. Not us, no.” It wasn’t for lack of Harry’s nagging. They’d never discussed it really and John was content to leave it that way.

(That wasn’t to say he wouldn’t mind, though. One day. It just didn’t seem like something Sherlock would be interested in.)

“Well, never say never, right?”

“Of course not,” Sherlock said with a small smile, crossing over to the window. There was an odd cast to his eyes and John shot him a questioning look.

“What’s all this, then?” he asked, making sure that Mrs. Hudson was out of earshot.

“I know we never said we were the marrying type, but I wouldn’t be averse. One day. If it was you.”

John took in a deep breath and was about to say something in response when Mrs. Hudson’s voice drifted in from the kitchen.

“What about these suicides then, Sherlock? I thought that’d be right up your street. Three exactly the same.”

“Four,” murmured Sherlock, peering out the window. “There’s been a fourth. Get your coat, John.”

“Right. Right, of course. Sorry to dash, Mrs. Hudson, but-”

“Oh go on then, you two.”

On their way down the stairs, John thought over what Sherlock had said before.

“I know we’ve never really talked about it but-”

“Later, John. There’s a case now.”

“But-”

Sherlock turned to face him, his face losing the steely determination it wore on crime scenes in favor of something softer, and his hands came up to clasp John’s.

“I said later, not never. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Right. Of course. Right.”

“Besides,” said Sherlock, striding out the door into the gray mid-morning London sun. “I feel like this case might be the start of something bigger than we can imagine.”

(John rolled his eyes at this. Always one for the dramatic, Sherlock. Some things never seemed to change.)

But John followed Sherlock, like always, into the streets, into the light, into the unknown.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's that. Thank you all so so so much for everything- it's been really great writing this and getting to talk to so many of you guys (and seeing all of your reactions to my relentless cliffhangers- sorry about that!)
> 
> I really really hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. It started out as what I thought would be a two or three chapter work and then spiraled into...this, and I enjoyed every second of it.
> 
> I've made a post on Tumblr about what's next for me writing wise (including answers to the question a few people were asking me, which is if I'll ever write more for this universe) and you can find it here: http://greyjoysed.tumblr.com/post/33043422653. If you want, you can follow me, which would be super cool, although I'll warn you now that it's lots of me complaining about my writing and Benedict Cumberbatch.
> 
> (On an unrelated note- I'm starting a slightly longer fic soon after this, set in the universe of one of my other stories, With Your Crooked Heart, and I'm looking for a beta. If anyone's interested let me know, I guess through a message on here or an ask on Tumblr? It would be super super awesome.)
> 
> Thank you all so much!


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